A love letter to flowers
I could fill a library with tomes dedicated to flowers. How do I express to you dear reader my adoration for flowers? Poems, sonnets, sonatas sing about flowers. I frequently take photos of flowers in all their varieties. I feel delighted, uplifted, and joyful when I discover a sweet flower in someone’s yard or in a bit of bushland.
Why do I want to tell you all about flowers? For me this is like a carpenter writing an ode to the plumb bob or a hammer. I use aspects of flowers at work, as essential oils or flower essences.
Truthfully, I think Eckhart Tolle in his First chapter of A New Earth describes it best. I shall quote it here, but not in full.
"Earth, 114 million years ago, one morning just after sunrise: The first flower ever to appear on the planet opens up to receive the rays of the sun. ...The first flower probably did not survive for long, and flowers must have remained rare and isolated phenomena.
Much later, those delicate and fragrant beings we call flowers would come to play an essential part in the evolution of consciousness of another species. Humans would increasingly be drawn to and fascinated by them. As the consciousness of human beings developed, flowers were most likely the first thing they came to value that had no utilitarian purpose for them, that is to say, was not linked in some way to survival.
Seeing beauty in a flower could awaken humans, however briefly, to the beauty that is an essential part of their own innermost being, their true nature. The first recognition of beauty was one of the most significant events in the evolution of human consciousness. The feelings of joy and love are intrinsically connected to that recognition. Without our fully realizing it, flowers would become for us an expression in form of that which is most high, most sacred, and ultimately formless within ourselves. Flowers, more fleeting, more ethereal, and more delicate than the plants out of which they emerged, would become like messengers from another realm, like a bridge between the world of physical forms and the formless."
A New Earth, Chapter One
Flowers are like magic keys. They are magic keys in that can help you recognise where you need support mentally and emotionally, for instance the calming of a lavender flower and the improving of memory with Rosemary (though that's with the leaf and stalk). As you observe a flower you will unconsciously note symbols that we as humans are hardwired with. This is called the Doctrine of Signatures and is especially important with Flower Essences. Doctrine of Signatures takes in the colour, the number of petals, if it droops or points up... and so on. The lotus flower is a great example; it rises up out of the mud to bloom. It starts in the muck and purifies itself to bloom, perfect to represent Spiritual blossoming. This is why it is the symbol of enlightenment. It can be several colours which then changes the Doctrine. The Lotus in Australia is white or purple.
Sometimes flowers look like hands, or faces, which shouts symbolism. The Grey spider flower, a Grevilla, looks like it has a lot of little faces on it, screaming. It is brilliant for issues relating to fear. I use three different types of Flower essences: the original Bach flowers (rescue remedy anyone?), Living Essences from Western Australia and Australian Bush Flower Essences from Eastern Australia (actually made in Terry Hills in Sydney). I also use gorgeous fragrant therapeutic essential oils mostly doTERRA.
Can you tell me your favourite flower? My guess is it will give me a clue about your nature or your current experience. Earlier in my life I really loved Banksias (and this one ). In Australia there are multiple Flower essences that are from different Banksias. Each essentially is for when you are exhausted, disheartened and struggling, which is where I have been off and on for a good decade. I also love Rose essential oil. Rose essential oil is love in a bottle. I think one of my passions in life is to assist those around me to love, whether it is others or themselves. An amazing resource is Emotions and Essential oils written by Enlighten. I cannot recommend this book and app highly enough...
Next time you are out and about and see a flower that really calls to you, take a photo. See if you can look up information about it as either an essential oil or a flower essence. If not, how does it make you feel? What does it smell like? What are its colours? Maybe you could take a single flower and press it in a diary.
A little bit more of flower whimsy…
As a child I fell in love with the flower fairy's painter Cicely May Parker. I currently have her painting 'The Pear blossom Fairy' on my wall at home. Her little drawings are so delightful and engage one’s imagination... I can just imagine skipping amongst the trees with a little flower fairy following close behind.
I will leave you with the Queen of Imagination, Anne of Green Gables, as she first travels to Green Gables along the apple tree Avenue.
Overhead was one long canopy of snowy fragrant bloom. Below the boughs the air was full of purple twilight and far head a glimpse of a painted sunset sky shone like a great rose window at the end of a cathedral aisle.
"Its beauty seemed to strike the child dumb. She leaned back in the buggy, her thin hands clasped before her, her face lifted rapturously to the white splendour above.
... "Oh it was wonderful-wonderful. It's the first thing I ever saw that couldn't be improved on by the imagination. It just satisfied me here" - she put one hand on her breast- " it made a queer funny ache and yet it was a pleasant ache, did you ever have an ache like that, Mr Cuthbert? ""
Anne of Green Gables
Much love and flowers,
Mary-Anne
