Healing Waters

After two weeks of reflection, I don’t think the huge headache I developed after the Herbal Conference at Breitenbush was due solely to caffeine withdrawal (maybe I’m in denial here). It might have been part of a healing process sparked by some of the workshops I attended. I’ve come up with this theory because I started dreaming again, within days of returning from the conference, and I haven’t had a really remarkable dream for years.

These dreams have been both vivid and significant. In one, my father (who died over 25 years ago) was being healed. He was lying on a beach and healer was painting his face with reddish pigment. A huge green wave came and washed over his body as I watched. In another dream, I was with my family and we were trying to escape a tidal wave by jumping into and floating around in the large lake in back of our house. The water was warm and green in color.

Both of these dreams emphasized water. Breitenbush is famous for its healing hot springs. And at the conference, I attended a workshop on Spiritual Bathing led by Rosita Arvigo who was trained by a Mayan shaman in Belize. She spoke about some of the conditions that require healing in that culture, conditions we might consider emotionally based, like fright or envy or grief. Then she created a florecida (a floral water) by placing herbs and flowers in a bowl of water and squeezing them with her fingers, while reciting this prayer she learned from Don Elijio Panti, a Mayan shaman with whom she studied:

In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, I give thanks to the spirit of this plant and I have faith with all my heart that you will help me to make a healing, purifying bath for [person].

She also called on the Blessed Virgin Mary and Ix Chel, the Mayan goddess of the moon, water and healing, and she told us we could use any deity we wanted, though it was important to recognize the power to heal came through this connection with the divine. We could use any flowers or herbs we liked in creating a bath for ourselves, but we should choose a significant number, for instance, 9 sprigs of each plant, and non-toxic plants or flowers, especially those that evoke certain qualities. She worked the plants with her fingers until they had discharged their qualities into the water—it should be a greenish color, and, since she used some mallow family flowers, it was also slimy.

Normally she would let this sit out in the sun for several hours but since we were doing a one-hour workshop, she walked around the room and asperged us, that is, sprinkled us with this special floral water, using a branch of cedar. I definitely felt the clearing energy of the water as she sprinkled it around my head, and I noticed the atmosphere of the room change as well, as she went around, asperging everyone.

But I don’t think I realized how profoundly this affected me until I began dreaming in the days that followed. After reading through Spiritual Bathing, the book of water rituals compiled by Rosita Arvigo and Nadine Epstein, I noticed that green water was mentioned in descriptions of certain rituals, including the preparation of agua de florida, used in Ayauasca ceremonies. Rosita also mentions the green color of the florecidas prepared by Julia Riveras during a workshop on the Amazon.

If you are looking for an overview of spiritual bathing traditions from all over the world, Spiritual Bathing is a good place to start. The book is beautiful, full of wonderful photographs but the coverage is a bit shallow. We get only the most general discussion, a page or two for each culture from Rome to India, Russia to Turkey, Japan to Peru. And the suggested rituals, though intriguing (I will try several of them), don’t seem traditional but rather adapted for modern American readers. I think this probably the nature of any glossy coffee-table book. One of the aspects of the book I enjoyed most were personal accounts of spiritual bath experiences from the two authors.

But if you want a really engaging, personal account of baths all over the world, I recommend Alexia Brue’s travel memoir: Cathedrals of the Flesh: My Search for the Perfect Bath, which details her trips around the world, searching for the perfect bath. However, she is more interested in the culture of the bath than the spiritual aspects of it.

Herbal Conference at Breitenbush

These blog posts are now being cross-posted at my new magazine, Living in Season. Check there for more feature articles.


Just got back from attending the Herbal Conference at Breitenbush Hot Springs. I haven't been to Breitenbush for 17 years, yet it felt so familiar that I wondered if I had simply forgotten a previous visit. Five years ago, I would have called this feeling deja vu. Now I simply wonder if I am losing my memory.

Perhaps it felt familiar, because it was so comfortable. I could sit down besides anyone and immediately fall into a meaningful conversation. And I had friends there--my herb teachers, Eaglesong and Sally King--and I met a School of the Seasons reader: Carmen, who won the Sniffathon (I only placed third). (The Sniffathon involved correctly identifying drops of essential oils dripped onto index cards.)

I always have a hard time at group meals, after I've filled up my tray and have to find a place to sit (bad memories from my year at Reed College). But on Friday night, I was lucky enough to sit at a table with two women who became my new Best Friends: Mary Lou and Amber. Amber was a green-haired, tattooed, 21-year-old from Dallas who had driven to the conference on her own and was camping for the first time in her life in a tent borrowed from her grandfather. I loved her energy and excitement and enthusiasm about everything. She also had that great Texas twang and Southern generosity. When I wandered late into my first class, she made sure I got a handout. Mary Lou was closer to my age but like Amber, she was also at a crossroads, since she had just quit her job as a dietitian for a nursing home and was searching for something meaningful to do with her passion for healthy foods and herbs. She was in every class I took and probably ended up taking the one class I missed, after I developed a bad headache.

It was ironic that I left a conference full of healers because I was sick but I'm one of those folks who when sick, wants to crawl off into the bushes, rather than admit I need help. And I'm a bit embarrassed to admit it was probably mostly caused by caffeine withdrawal (no caffeine served at Breitenbush--just vegetarian food and herbal teas). The headache started to ebb after I stopped at the first rest stop with free coffee.

So did I learn anything new about herbs? Not as much as I expected. Mostly I learned about nutritional anthropology and metabolic types and intuitive eating (that's Paul Bergner's term--I loved it--it means asking your body to inform you of what it wants for your highest good). I also learned about stress and susto (as it's called by healers in Belize where Rosita Arvigo lives and works, fright in English) and how the production of adrenaline and subsequent crash (the body's response to trauma) can create imbalances that can later be treated by herbs, vitamins and nutritional supplements (Leslie Korn's methods) and spiritual practices (Rosita taught a great class on spiritual bathing). I also went on a great plant walk with Paul Bergner where he taught us to draw plants by memory. More about this later.

Plant Birthday

These entries are now being posted both here and at my new web site, Living in Season.

Tell me of what plant birthday a man takes notice, and I shall tell you a good deal about his vocation, his hobbies, his hay fever, and the general level of his ecological education.
Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

For Leopold it’s the cutleaf Silphium, blooming in the corner of an old cemetery. For me, it’s the autumn crocus, blooming on my birthday.

It always catches my by surprise, even though I watch for it as my birthday approaches. I didn’t see a trace of it in its usual habitat but coming home from a BBQ on Sunday night, I spotted the autumn croci (above) springing up from the dirt outside an apartment building.

Then on my way to work today, I found them in the place I’ve grown accustomed to seeing them. With the sunlight shining on them, they truly resembled “the lamps of the ghoul,” the name the Arabs give this plant (according to Wilfrid Blunt) because they are so poisonous. Other common names: naked nannies and bare-bottoms.

So what does that say of me, that this is the plant birthday I notice?

Rose Desserts

As part of my experiment with edible flowers, I made two desserts out of rose petals this past weekend and to my surprise, both of them produced wonderful results.

Rose Sorbet
I used the delightfully spicy-smelling petals from my favorite vacant lot rose to make a rose sorbet. The recipe I was using called for petals from 16 roses, but I only had four so I cut the recipe by one fourth.

1-1/4 cups castor (superfine) sugar (I used powdered sugar--I think regular sugar would work fine too)
2 cups cold water
4 oz scented unsprayed rose petals (about 16 roses)
6 tbsp rosewater
2 tsp glycerin
juice of 1 lemon [optional]

1) Put the sugar and 1 cup of water in a saucepan and heat until the sugar dissolves. Put the rose petals in the syrup and allow them to wilt, then add the second cup of cold water and the rosewater. Let cool for 20 to 30 minutes. Then add the glycerin (this preserves the wonderful bright color of the roses; without it the sorbet will be muddy looking and not so appetizing).
2) Let this mixture steep for 5 hours or overnight.
3) Add the lemon juice (I didn't) and push the mixture through a sieve, to get all the juice out of the rose petals. Discard them.
4) Churn using an ice cream machine. I don't have one so I made the sorbet using instructions for making ice cream by hand from David Lebovitz, author of The Perfect Scoop.

Basically, you cool the mixture over an ice bath (I didn't do this since it was already cool since I put it in the refrigerator overnight). Then you put it in a plastic dish in the freezer and set a timer for 45 minutes. At 45 minutes you stir it up with a whisk or a spoon, breaking up all the ice crystals that are forming. You set the timer for 30 minutes and do that again. And then another 30 minutes. And then another. And so forth for about two to three hours or until it seems done.

I have to confess I stopped stirring my sorbet after two hours. It stayed rather icy, more like a granita than a sorbet. That wasn't a problem for me as I enjoyed the texture, the flavor and the color. I had much better success with this method of making ice cream when I made the recipe below.

Rose Ice Cream
I was so happy with the sorbet I wanted to make ice cream but I didn't have any fresh rose petals. So I made this recipe, which requires fresh flowers, with the dried flowers from my pink rosa rugosa. They are much sweeter and pinker than the red rose.

1 cup heavy cream
1 cup whole milk
1 cup sugar
5 large egg yolks
1 1/2 cups loosely packed, very fragrant rose petals, washed and spun dry

1) Prepare an ice bath by placing ice cubes in a large flat-bottomed container that will hold the bowl where the ice cream will be chilled
2) Combine the rose petals and sugar in a food processor with the metal blade and make into a paste. (Since I used dried flowers, it was more like rose sugar than paste).
3) Combine the cream, milk and sugar paste in a saucepan over medium heat and stir until the sugar dissolves. Bring to a simmer and then take off the heat.
4) Place the egg yolks in a bowl and whisk until light. Then add the hot liquid slowly, whisking until thoroughly mixed. Return to the saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon until it reaches 180 degrees on a candy thermometer or coats the back of the spoon.
5) Strain the mixture into a clean container (I didn't do this since I didn't mind the faint texture of the petals) and place in the ice bath.
Then you would proceed to make ice cream either as above or with your ice cream machine.

This recipe did not call for glycerin, but I think I would add that to the rose and sugar mixture to bring up the color. I added red food color instead and the end result was a muddy pink. It looks a bit like Play Doh and the texture is somewhat chewy as well but the flavor is like nothing I've ever tasted. I dream about it all day long. Luckily I still have some in the freezer.

Let me know if you have any success with these recipes or if you have another recipe you like.

Many Moon Names

I'm a total fan of Havi Brooks of the Fluent Self, so it was totally amazing to be a featured guest at her Kitchen Table, and now she's mentioned my book on her delightful blog and suggested her readers play with one of the exercises, the one where you get to make up your own names for the moons. I'm reveling in all the creative names people posted as comments. Check it out!

I'm illustrating this blog entry with one of Catherine Kerr's magnificent moon photos. She has been taking these every full moon for years. This one, like the one featured on the Celebrations article at my new online magazine, is the August full moon. Cate always provides a long list of traditional names for each full moon as she did in the blog entry that accompanied the photograph.

Summer Slowly

I've decided to keep both blogs running, though I will encourage you to sign up at my new blog at my new magazine, Living in Season in case I ever do abandon my beloved Blogger blog.

A long-time School of the Seasons reader and contributor, Taffy Hill, sent me a link to a blog entry by Beth Dargis of My Simpler Life about things that should be savored and done slowly.

I loved Beth’s list and was even more delighted to see the thread was started by my friend and colleague, Christine Valters Paintner, at her blog, Abbey of the Arts.

Let’s expand this idea here. I'd love to entertain your ideas about things that should be done slowly.

My favorite is walking slowly. I find this easiest to do while walking the dog. Right now my walking companion is Pepe, my daughter's Chihuahua. He likes to go slow, especially in the summer. He often plops down on the grass and refuses to move

New Blog

I've just created a beautiful magazine, and it includes a blog column. So look for new entries there.