Sparkling Lotus Ink

Oil Infusion Update

Earlier today I checked on my ceremonial oil and noticed a large air bubble in the quart jar.  You can see it above covering the left side of jar's curved base.    Brought both jars out to the kitchen in order to rectify and take these pics.  Thought it might be helpful if you're getting ready to check your own brews or simply appreciate more encouragement by way of information concerning what you can expect as an overall process when doing this for yourself.

   As soon as I unsealed the jar band on the quart jar I could smell the white pine.  Once I lifted the lid I also smelled juniper and lavender in equal measure.  It was only after I walked away to grab my camera that my brain registered the after-note of tulsi just as true to itself as a small crushed leaf in my hand.

a visual aid of what you can expect due to oil seepage.  The outside of the infusion bottle may also have a sheen of oil.  I use a cotton dishcloth with a tiny amount of grease cutting liquid dish detergent to swipe clear then polish everything clean with some warm water rinsed through the cloth and over the dish.

note:  I don't include this oil with lid leavings (see below) because it isn't remotely clean.  It's been sitting around in the open air collecting everything that's passed through the room.  By default  that means it's holding  a much lower vibrational frequency than sequestered lid leavings.

Here's what full to the brim should look like.  Note the surface tension of the oil is still holding its own weight.  Nothing should be dripping before you do this:

You can see oil seeping like something in a cave, and also dots of infusion material.  That means you'll need to get everything clean and clear of oil.  Yes I realize that sounds redundant but oil's relatively heavy. That can be a royal pain if you've got a lot of it to deal with at one time and your cleaning cloth becomes over-saturated too soon.

pro tip:  The surface tension smush-down pictured above makes its own case for the advantages of working with banded lid canning jars.  Although it's by nature a messy maneuver this particular way of getting the jar re-sealed with confidence is simple and effectively fool-proof.

When you check on your own oil's welfare you'll probably have a lid with some thoroughly oil saturated infusion materials clinging to the lid's underside.  Usually I use a small rubber spatula to scoop everything back in the jar.  But today I had the inspiration to try scooping everything into the bottom pan of the enamel pan I use for all my herbal concoctionary needs.   Once the water was simmering I placed it on the stove's warming burner.  This had the whole downstairs smelling refreshed and revitalized in 20 minutes or so. 

The smaller half pint bottle I prepared didn't need additional oil.  When I took a deep inhalation of its scent I discovered the imprint was exactly opposite to the larger jar.  The tulsi hit me right in the third eye as soon as the lid was unsealed.  But the general scent's olfactory after-glow came from white pine.  In both jars the elder lavender buds mellowed the sharp edges of the juniper.  Which in turn enlivened and bolstered the lavender.

If you're doing this - or still actively planning something out at the recipe level please share in comments or drop me an email.

LOVE

Feed What Feeds You .1

Thought this might be a nice post to get manifested at a point in the year when there are plenty of gathering options irrespective of hemisphere and general temperature ranges.  Am aware that many who read here actively engage in a variety of ceremonial rituals, including caring for the sacred objects they like to work with and Keep.  More than likely that means everyone also has their own existing care and feeding rituals related to nourishing those things that nourish us tenfold more.   Years ago I developed the habit of making my own consecration oils for nourishing purposes.   I use them to dress candles just prior to lighting.  I also like to warm the oil on the stove, add just a bit of beeswax, and pour it to cool within recycled hand or face cream jars.   This becomes a nourishing and revitalizing butter for all wooden objects of ceremony as well as skin-headed drums and rattles.

~*~ you need a scrupulously clean wide-mouthed glass jar to successfully manifest this project.  As a guide - I use a half pint canning jar for my personal use and in this case I also impulsively grabbed a full pint jar to infuse for wider distribution.  Mainly because I inadvertently over-gathered inclusive materials.  I've found a half pint of oil will meet my personal needs, plus maybe six or seven half ounce bottles to be given as gifts, for 2 or 3 years ~*~

I put the above jar remarks first because there's really no way around their importance at a practical level. Now to the single most vibrationally important aspect of creating a ceremonial oil that is in complete tune with your uniquely impeccable intentions:

when working with fresh/windfall materials:  isolate your focus on your home landscape's most inherently sacred plants that are also at least a bit fragrant and safe enough to be handled over time.  As with any other sacred and ceremonial endeavor there may be one or two that call to you there in the spontaneous moment of scanning what's available to be gathered.

  If you're strictly urban or unable to roam around outdoors:  Take stock of what you've gathered through shops, precious gathering expeditions in a loved one's garden or wild-crafting adventures, and as gifts from friends.  Plan to spend a long slow dreary Saturday or Sunday puttering about your home while a small pan of infusing oil wafts its magic throughout your brain chemistry and home environment.  Be assured that most dried herbs re-hydrate with slow deliciousness especially when they're warmed in a gentle and slow manner.

Note: You'll create a far more phytochemically potent oil by going the warm infusion route.  Or if you get a little science-y from time to time, as I do, you might relish putting up two half pints - one as a warm infusion and the other left in place over slowed-down time as a cold infusion.  That's how I concluded I preferred the latter method - because it felt a lot more vibrationally unique and gorgeously subtle to me.  Among many other things I particularly loved how grounding and centering it became simply to see the infusion bottle sitting there quietly holding space in alchemical process day after week after month.  Every time I picked it up and gently shook it I imbued the container's energy with my own love and gratitude for this tiny little way of slowing time enough to hold it there in my hand.

Perhaps your own emergent recipe will incorporate sacred purification elements of a long-standing historical nature such as the juniper and white pine in the first image.  Or it might revolve around a plant or two with an established spiritual/ceremonial history that led to its inclusion in your garden space.  My interest in Angelica archangelica (seedheads pictured above at my former home) began in my early twenties so when I first felt drawn to making ceremonial oils about a dozen years later it was a no-brainer to base nearly all of them, for years and years, upon the elevating properties of this illustrious herb's distinctive angelically antiseptic scent.

[Note the commonality of cleansing & purification properties held between the two evergreen sprigs and the angelica seed heads.  Somebody working from dried/cached supplies might fill this quadrant by selecting some preciously hoarded copal, amber, or myrrh resin.  If that somebody is you, pound what you've got into smaller pieces or at least scarify your resin in order to release more of its scent's healing and illuminating properties.]

pro tip:  pounding dried tree resin is 'way easier and far less fiddly but if you're used to scarifying tough seeds here's another way to put that highly specific skill set to practical use.

Over the years I've been drawn to create nearly all the infusions I've made with olive oil as their carrier.  For the vibrational/ceremonial oils I generally go with three months of cool infusion on a dark shelf in my dining room.  This makes the coalescence of energetic and phytochemical properties nicely subtle and more about co-creation than 'maximum extraction' as when preparing medicinal tinctures and therapeutic oils.  Matters of scent are easily fine-tuned once the base oil is prepared - most commonly via essential oils and/or strongly fragrant flower petals such as tea roses, their fresh wild cousins, or highly scented lilies such as the ever-popular Stargazer. 

Am repeating a more complete look at the first image so you don't have to scroll up as you think more closely about your own options.  Remember my chosen/illustrated quartet is just an example based on what was immediately on offering at the time I was spontaneously moved to prepare this oil as a ceremonial activity during the current season's mid-point energetic cresting. 

Perhaps your ideal base/grounding formulation is a trio or even a duet.  Focus on what it FEELS like you should work with not What Acey Did.  That having been said - my oil's four-square base is firmly grounded in Place by the two evergreens inclusions.  White pine is a naturally occurring tree ally and the juniper bush by the frog pond is the botanical anchor of the original landscaping plantings. 

If you're reading along thinking I'd really like to do this but where would I even start try this:

Consider, as quietly as possible, what would ground your oil in the most personally meaningful corners of your daily landscape?  Just keep asking yourself that until your automatic answer stops reflecting your lack of certainty.  Go with your instincts.  You have them or you wouldn't still be reading along with any inclination to try it for yourself.  Gather what makes sense amount-wise plus just a little more. Not too much.  Just enough so you aren't cut short if the proportional amounts need to be 'adjusted for taste' as you move into the prep work and your gathered materials begin to look and feel a bit different.

With strong grounding comes the ceremonial need for equally strong elevation. Lavender is an excellent and widely available choice in dried bud form that's often vibrant enough to include in projects like this one for two or even three years after harvesting.  The dried buds in this post's images were given to me (an entire pound. YIKES.) two years ago in fully dried and husked form.  But these treasures from a summer gone by shyly murmured in a steady way within my heart while I was figuring out my recipe - forgotten as they were in the farthest recess of my herbal pantry.  I'd received so much lavender I simply didn't know how to deal beyond shoving the final overwhelming last-straw quart jar of it far out of sight.  Stay tuned for how I'll employ the rest of this retrieved cache - most likely in celebration of the winter solstice.

To round out the quartet/power-square base, I was drawn to pluck the remaining sprigs of Tulsi that had not yet succumbed to our plummeting night temperatures.   As you read my explanation below, think about any plant that YOU'VE actively brought into your garden/life specifically because it elevates your mood, soul and spirit.  The vibrational goal in making a four-square base is to balance the organic landscape energy with intentional humanly-introduced plant energy of equal significance to the person making the oil.  For that reason this is a great activity for Going Within in a unique way that may well reverberate, at least a little, every time you work with the oil or share it with somebody else.

~*~*~

Every year I grow about a hundred Tulsi plants from seed.  Some day I'll explain the whole story but for now:  the plants live as hardened off seedlings ever-eager to become full blooming plants within a variety of containers on our deck and the paved area below it.   In the beginning of the crop's outdoor growing season I pinch off the tops when the flower heads are plump with purple-tinged budding energy.  These are carefully dried for my family's winter tea inclusions.  As the plants begin to branch I continue to harvest for drying purposes, but only here and there.  At this point many of the tea herbs in the field are in bud, bloom or swollen with sought-after leaves so I focus on preparing our daily restorative teas from freshly gathered materials.  In this dual manner I harvest what I pre-determine to be my fair share of the Tulsi over the next few months.  The scant leavings pictured above, on the eve of Samhain, held a deep reservoir of this beautiful plant's juicily scented healing signature:  abundant illumination, spiritual protection and elevation.

Let's review how to recreate my power-square on your own terms:  think about the scents and plant energies that draw you in and hold you steady in both practical and elevated aspects of your life.  

As a very different example from what's on the screen - one year pretty far back in the past I made a square infusion from chopped angelica leaf stems, a few pristine acorns gathered from a particularly meaningful tree, a small white shell of enormous personal significance, and a recently broken aqua aura point.  Later, when the oil felt ready for its final touches, I decanted and strained, placed the clear oil in a fresh glass storage jar, and then added a few drops of frankincense and sweet orange essential oils, plus the precious last remaining segment of a dried vanilla pod.   I shook vigorously for about a week before commencing work with the oil, with the vanilla pod fragment left in the jar. 

While you're finalizing your choices make sure you have a sufficient amount of carrier oil on hand.  Olive oil is often the cheapest and easiest choice especially since most people already have it on hand in their cabinet.  It's easy to find in the market in a variety of quantities/prices.  Of even more value for vibrational considerations, olive oil has a number of established connotations in both healing and ceremonial work.  It weight and viscosity adds a nice little sizzle to a burning candle and hugs the beeswax close when making a butter-cream to feed your sacred objects.

Gather your chosen infusion elements.  Work quietly and mindfully to chop or hand-tear the various elements.  Remember that the more you cut or tear the fresh material, the more surface area will be exposed for infusing the oil with its physical/phytochemical properties.

pro tip:  set aside any stems or woody branches to dry a bit.   When your homespace feels in need of a special cleansing and brightening perk, break everything into pieces that will fit in a simmering pan of water.  The scent will be subtle at first and then (as the dried wood chemistry releases itself into the heated water) miraculously full and rejuvenating.

I'm not sure how long it took me to prepare my pint and half pint jars.  I do know it was long enough to drop down deep into my quiet inner center.  And to relish how healing it felt and how grateful I was to have taken the time and space for the process.

Once you have your materials bruised or chopped place them gently in their jar and slowly fill it with olive oil.  Note:  since oil's so heavy it takes a while for all the air bubbles to rise to the surface.  You can help this along with a clean chop stick or wooden barbecue skewer,  Sometimes for smaller bottles I've used an extra long darning or doll-making needle.  Try stirring the bottle's contents gently then doing something else for twenty minutes before stirring again.  Once all the air bubbles seem to be released cap the bottle tightly.  Turn it upside down on a saucer or in a shallow bowl.  Leave it alone overnight or even a bit longer.  By then any remaining air will have formed a gigantic bubble at the bottom of the jar.

note: I like isolating the air bubble this way even though it means you have to turn the bottle over to get it all the way filled.  But this way you'll have a visual idea of how much oil you have to add due to the curvature at the base of most glass bottles.  Upright, it's easy to get visually distracted by both the lid bands and the congregated infusion materials due to somewhat less curvature at the top of a typical wide-mouthed jar.

Once you've adjusted the oil amount in the jar, it will become very apparent why you're sequestering this project within a saucer or bowl.  Keeping the project as clean and free of seeping oil as possible is a bit fiddly but easy enough to manage quickly and effectively. I like the way this low-key jar tending adds another layering act of careful manifestion.  I usually keep the oil infusion going for a full season.  This would make a lovely family/inter-generational project to begin now and complete in late winter or early spring.

If you have any questions, leave comments or send me an email.

LOVE

Above: my beloved familiar kitty-girl Celeste who died, at 23, two years ago tomorrow.   Here she is as a young lass in one of her favorite resting places at our former home - nestled deep within an expansive colony of Sweet Cicely.  She also loved resting amongst Angelica plants which is what I thought this image showed until I loaded it into this post.  Have decided I like closing-out with this peekaboo glimpse of her all the same.  For she is an enormously big part of the story I'm telling here ...

healing light(s) .1

Wasn't sure what image to choose for this one but finally settled on this fragment from a long ago Business & Communication altar in a place I no longer live. I chose it because the topic of this post first made itself known in my bubbling consciousness during that linear time frame.  Gazing at the image it's not that hard to send myself back to Then during this same time of year in 2002.  I'd been distributing homemade flower essence preparations for just a few years.  Hardly a week went by when I didn't spend meditation time actively seeking a sense of connection to others who were pro-active and committed in our patterns of inter-species communication.  People absolutely called - beyond a shade of doubt - CALLED to prepare and distribute flower essences.  Not (ever) as a business.  But just because.  What else would one do if so called?

In the larger human world of daily context I was still learning what it meant to live in xurbia rather than a thriving metropolis.  I cultivated social ties with other Gaia lovers (and more specialized plant geeks) in a local radius that, over time, proved nothing short of transformational.  I also treasured a circle of more far-flung friends with similar interests.  What gave me a sense of being set apart from those connections was a lack of knowing anyone else who was making their own essences.  That specific form of circumstantial loneliness guided me to seek psychic contact with whoever these unknown people might be.  I formed the habit of moon gazing  while asking if anyone else was Out There doing and thinking and learning the same kinds of things.

yes 

Sometimes I would have the sense I'd managed to connect somehow and in response the connection was reinforced with that single word.  It didn't take long to begin wondering about matters that no longer seem strange to me - not even when I hear myself saying them aloud to somebody else.  I wondered if these affirmations were an actual reception and transmission process in the classic psychic sense OR if they might spring from the collected energy within whatever groves we claimed as part of our particular sacred space(s) - whatever rocks we might have collected and carefully configured - whatever dreams we might share, person-to-person, without even properly remembering a single one of them.  Surely our most potently sacred and personally true self releases particles of itself in such ways.  Within those places where we danced unself-consciously and at times without clothes.  Within the places where we saw - just for a split second of linear time - another sort of Being caught offguard by our presence.  Moving swiftly through something seamless and fluid that separates their time in shared spaces from ours.

yes.    yes.  yes.

One long summer evening back then I sprawled on my bed staring lovingly into the wide flung bough of a silver maple that became deeply meaningful to the point of feeling like a member of the family during the 14 years we lived there.  I was looking at the tree and then all of a sudden I was looking at a kind of holographic map of the country, seen only in shadow form but yet quite clearly that's what I saw.  I don't mean in the hallucinatory sense, I just mean my inner visual screen superimposed itself in a way that was far more compelling.  Because I was seeing beautiful leaf green, electric blue and buttery yellow lights twinkling and gleaming here and there all over the country.  I saw rose and turquoise and a deep jade-like green so exquisite that I wept in gratitude the first time I realized I might be able to replicate it with just the right mixing of watercolor pigments.

we are here.

It was such a perfect summer evening that magical abilities such as these seemed as natural and ongoing as the presence of whatever favorite cooling beverage you sip as you gaze long and deep into the sky.  I had no trouble believing there was cumulative value in what we do at the earth loving and healing level that moves far beyond whatever our specific reasons are for following our inner and outer guidance systems.  I understood this sort of thing was moving and transforming just as it always has on this continent.  Throughout the planet, come to that: the universal power of Word transferred to other forms of universally understood language.  Fragrant smoke from a sacred fire wafting beyond time and space.  The earth's heartbeat mirrored in a drum's steady rhythm.  When-and where-ever we set our messages of love and commitment to each other in place through the way we dance along with the flickering elements of sacred flames or add pop and sizzle to a heart drumbeat's foundation with rattles of all kinds and spontaneous wild-timbred vocalizations. 

we are here.  we are doing what we've learned it's important to do. 

[This post serves as a prologue to something long and more layered concerning how and when I received confirmation of another person having an empowered and empowering moment quite similar to my own vis a vis a sudden beauteous awareness of other human souls projecting themselves as colored lights - here, there and everywhere.]

yesterday ...

I met myself returning at least in the selfie/shadow sense.    Before that I wandered around the place and took a lot of record/update pics.  Will post a few of my faves later in the weekend.   Have recently decided if the general world is determined to keep on going to hell in a handbasket - I'm going to declare a personal universe in which 4 day weekends are completely the norm.  Have always done a lot of my best work and had the most meaningful interpersonal experiences on weekends anyway, so ...

Alchemical Rituals .1

Today's post is a lateral move on the same underlying subject for much of this blog.  Above is the finished cover of an art journal I've worked in since January '18.  At that time I impulsively signed up for a year long online art journaling class called Rituals.  This was the brainchild of Vanessa Oliver-Lloyd.  In her introductory video for the course Vanessa spoke of bringing participants closer to their own forms of ceremony and sacred self-care rituals.  For me it certainly did that - in a few instances beyond anything I would have imagined or thought to actively set in motion.  I wound up working on this project, off and on at very specific concentrated intervals, until the end of last month.

I allowed myself to take more time because it was clear to me early into the process that I was doing more than introspectively recording a consciously mindful year in my life.  I was also just as consciously developing a ceremonial announcement to myself that, following a decade of making my way through the vestibule of the Croning process, I felt I had arrived in the welcoming embrace of this ever-significant third stage of a woman's life. The journal was to be a celebratory acknowledgement of that arrival.  I aimed to include all that mattered (heavily codified of course) from the first two stages of my life.  This allowed me the grace of consciously choosing what form(s) of myself I wished to bring into the future with me.  I figured I'd work largely in metaphor but sometimes in direct linear relationship to ongoing daily life.  

I worked in a larger format (11 x 14) than any of my three previously established size comfort zones.  Mainly this happened because I hoped to avoid spending any money on this project - at least not beyond raw supplies that were already on my radar and thus I knew might tempt me because it's how I'm wired.  Beyond that - I had what I had, period.  My cache of supplies included a purchased-at-half-price Strathmore sketchbook.  I rewatched a video I recalled bookmarking about how to systematically break the spine of these books so the smythe binding becomes more pliant and copic-like.  I relished making a conscious ritual of that.  I also embraced the ongoing challenge of thinking/designing in an unfamiliar size/shape of blank space.

  Just before the class officially began I determined that I wished to create a dystopian on-the-fly graffiti wall version of a classical illuminated manuscript.  The very idea thrilled me with both its audacity level and the uncharted potentiality for personal growth of a visual nature.  At first I began working with the months' various themes without concerning myself over the cover.  Then while sifting through a pile of kinda-forgotten collage fodder I came upon the substrate version of a free Holistic Health magazine I'd picked up years earlier. 

At the time I found it the kind of meaningful that lasts for ages - to offhandedly encounter a boldly illustrated woman who looked a lot like me from the back wearing a color of dress that was at the time highly significant to me.  As soon as I got home I tacked the cover above a small dresser filled with rattles, crystals and tarot cards.  For years the image reminded me of who I most imagined myself to be in the spiritual and idealized senses of Being.

My first plan was to leave the cover in place and simply collage over parts of the original cover that didn't fit my theme and the design mood I wanted to set.  I thought I'd have the former me entering the book and then at the end of the year I'd paint myself face first emerging from the back cover.  As is always the way of an ongoing introspective creative venture, this worked until it didn't.  I wasn't, after all, entering this project and whatever it might become as the "old" me.   The most obvious change I'd have to make as a nod to deeper acknowledgement of who I already was: fix the hair color.  

The next thing I changed was the dress color - choosing my fave deep red-violet ink to painstakingly apply with a tiny round brush - around and about the botanical patterns on the dress.  I gambled this color of relatively transparent ink over stationary bright yellow might yield something of a purple-ish mahogany color similar to manzanita bark.

Pretty soon after that I gesso'd over everything but Earth Star and the sashaying female form.  Stared at that I don't know how long before I realized the title of the actual journal in front of me was both obvious and profound.  Furthermore, the lettering could be constructed in a way that would give the cover just the kind of vibe I'd envisioned without yet knowing what it would mean at any level of detail.  Among many other things this project brought me home to a core/eternal version of myself that was inextricably linked to flower essences in a variety of different ways.  Most congruently and deeply it brought me home to self-relationship as a flower-based alchemist.  During the summer of '18 I began to prepare essences after three growing seasons of the co-creative web maintaining a form of radio silence that's quite difficult to describe with words.

In the end I got all artist-ish picky and specific about the hair and how it wasn't at all right and I just wasn't gonna be happy until I gave into the fairly loud as opposed to quietly still inner voice that kept suggesting just let yourself go with a paint pen.  Also was compelled to do some sandpapering until the skin was lightly dark or darkly light and thus more like my own.  In the very beginning, before I'd changed anything but hair, I'd wanted to paint the skin violet or the color of manzanita bark.  Then that felt far too exposing. I mean this directly in the context of having decided to go on instagram in large part so I could share portions of this project while it was still happening -with other people who were sharing individualized responses to a collective endeavor.  Those ladies would have actively applauded I'm quite sure but at the time my reasons for wanting to do it were very vulnerable and significant in a way that was raw and demanding of protection.  

I feel strongly that this particular creative project belongs on this blog rather than something separately devoted to personal creative output.  I wasn't sure why I was so certain when I started to write this post but now as words find their intentional conclusion I see it's pretty obvious.  Earth Star Alchemy Rituals is a way I both synthesized land/interspecies communication and codified it for easy carrying, lifting, and sharing as my life moves forward.  So much of what goes on when we consciously deepen our connections with other species is far beyond the scope and limits of language.  I don't think any single group of inter-species wisdom keepers understands that better than flowers do. 

This project didn't just help me to get everything I've written about on this blog into a congruent form of personal meaning at that beyond words level.  It also taught me how I was choosing to be seen by all the other species here on this small piece of land where I live.  Had never thought of any of this from that particular angle - the idea of choices in self-presentation being important rather than a terminally human preoccupation...