A powerful, inspiring and deeply healing ally arrived this week. We had been searching for a long time for an alive essential oil of helichrysum. Our new Helichrysum essential oil is a rare and incredibly special and unique aromatic ally. Like all special beings, it came at the right time and in a way that no one could have imagined.
As I sit here with it, writing this blog post, my heart is so grateful for this amazing plant and for the friend and distiller Ante who was able to honor it and extract not only the aromatics, but the soul that resides in this sovereign being.
It is wonderful that the allies that can support us in challenging times arrive when needed. We only have to recognize them. Last week I was working with Saint John’s wort and its solar power and ability to put us in touch with the sacred masculine. This theme continues with helichrysum. It needs the sun and expresses that solar energy in its bright yellow flowers that are commonly called immortelle. These paper-like flowers cannot die or wither. They remain intact and even when the color has passed, the sun passes through the transparent veils and continues to light them up with its life force.
Considering the state of the world and modern society today, highlighted some time ago by the death of George Floyd, I ask myself in what way can we all contribute to healing the inner masculine? The sacred ‘he’ within us all that has been colonized by a power structure called patriarchy, which has also colonized the feminine. On tuning into the ‘sun’ energy held in the helichrysum essential oil, I realized that without the sun there is no light, without which there is no life. The sun and therefore the masculine aspect within us all beholds life. It is the spirit that beholds matter, that beholds the feminine. There is a big difference between the sacred masculine and patriarchy. The latter refuses to behold nature, matter, the feminine and chooses to destroy them and commodify them.
Children need to be beheld in order to grow into themselves and love themselves. The problem with our rigid, power-hungry society is that colonized parents often impose the colonizer (patriarchal values) onto the children. The inner child feels there is no place for their authentic selves and so gradually they give themselves up. The inner child is abandoned.
Helichrysum, as an aromatic ally, helps us to behold, to shine the light upon this hidden part of ourselves, to bring he or she back to life. This part of ourselves is our freedom, our true essence, our unbounded self. It is the part we need to truly create and manifest our imaginative, inspired, original selves in the world. The world needs us to be this part of ourselves, not the controlled colonized beings that our ill society is demanding.
This oil brings me hope today and shines its light fiercely, yet gently on the part of me that has come back to life, been reanimated through the long process of decolonization. It resonates with my sacred, inner masculine who is proud of and shines his spirit on my inner, unbound self, the child that has been waiting 50 years to come to the forefront and light me up with her passion, her belief in herself, with her untainted heart.
This, I believe is the work we all need to be doing on the planet today. We cannot move forward until we liberate our indigenous sacred masculine (yes we all have one), decolonize him from the grips of patriarchy, give him back his rightful place and allow his spirit to bring life to our bodies, to our feminine being that itself in our embodied state holds that spirit.
We have put our trust in the wrong hands. The ego has seduced and bluffed us. A white cop slowly suffocating a black man in the streets of America is a huge symbol in the psyche of us all. It is a global image of how we have killed and continue to kill the indigenous man in us all, he who is not above but part of nature, he who is wise enough to resonate with mother nature and with the feminine.
Now, like never before, is the time to call in the allies, the plants, animals, ancestors that can help us track that inner killer and disarm him. He is dangerous and out of control.
As I finish this, I am realizing that helichrysum is not only an aromatic ally, but a shamanic being, a light in the dark, a torch that can accompany us as we re-align and partner with our shadow to become whole.
