with Cacey Blackburn from Seahorse Oracle
My first flower essence experience was far from normal. In fact, it was to signal a much deeper journey for me that wouldn’t open up until later in life. Often, we have plenty of signs given to us, but we only see them and make sense of the twists and turns of our life journey in retrospect.
Flower essences can connect us into the network of the nature kingdom. They are the ‘gift’ of the plant. The beautiful, attractive and eye-catching expression of the sexual organ of the plant. (Think bees being attracted to pollinate the flower).
My first experience of a flower essence opened up a profound door of experience for me that shaped my whole career, and was also a spiritual rebirth for my soul. A simple flower.
Nymphaea violacea
In my early twenties I attended a training with the American Foundation for Shamanic Practises with a very wise Psychologist. Giselle Rhionberry used Shamanic journeying in her Psychology practise to help many people struggling with emotional and psychological issues.
We went on several journeys in that training using drumming and smoke to access trance states where we received visions of guidance and healing. During one of these journeys, I was taken by a rabbit who appeared to me deep within the earth, underground, to a place where I was shown two ‘gifts’ for me. One was a carrot, yes, a carrot. The other was a huge red flower.
I had never seen this flower before, but I knew it was meant for me. When I asked the rabbit what to do with this, it said ‘eat more carrots’ …I know, hilarious, rabbits and carrots. And then ‘find this flower’, so I knew I needed to go looking for this flower. Upon completing that Shamanic journey, I heard bells ringing. When I came back into my body, and the room, nobody else had heard the bells. Giselle said to me, when you hear bells on a journey it’s a message that you have received knowledge from angels (angles of light vibration). Also, that you may have touched the faery realms, people often hear bells there, or are lured by bells into the forest.
So, from there I was on a mission to find this flower. I walked into a health food shop the following week in my local town, and told the woman in the shop I was searching for this flower, and described it. She knew exactly what it was and gave it to me. It was Red Lotus, Nymphaea rubra. Native to Northern Queensland, Australia and available to take internally as a flower essence medicine. This was my first flower essence and my initiation into the medicine of flowers.
This particular flower was so relevant and helpful to me at the time, when I read the description of what the healing attributes were, I couldn’t believe it was exactly what I needed. And I found it in the first place that I looked! How often the hero’s journey begins with good luck…beginners’ luck, and the challenges and tests come later. Usually when you’ve become too arrogant and need to be taken down a peg or two.
As a young person, I had experienced a few traumatic events that had caused me to disassociate (leave my body temporarily to avoid pain). The Red Lily (Red Lotus), would soon heal that disassociation. Pulling my energy right back into my body and helping me to get aligned again in all of my many layers of self, emotions, psychology, physically and spiritually.
Red Lily
I had no idea what to expect and I was truly amazed at how the flower spoke to me through dreams, and directly with feelings, emotions and physical experiences. I felt like I could feel my feet on the ground for the first time.
I would later become a fully trained practitioner and teacher of flower essences, and use it as one of my main tools in my Counselling career. Eventually coming to the place now, where I have created my own flower essences to share with the world.
I’ve personally experienced many profound healings and amazing shifts with flower essences, and sometimes the experience is very subconscious and subtle. This being the case, I think sometimes people underestimate how powerful they are.
They work on the subtle energies of your whole being – to bring about harmony, well-being and a sense of calm and direction. They know exactly what you need. They speak to you through their colours and shapes. This is called their ‘doctrine of signatures’. Where each flower grows, what it looks like, what it eats and its function in the cycle of life, all provides clues as to the nature of it’s healing powers.
Martin Prechtel, a Mayan Shaman (https://www.martinprechtel.com/) who is a long-time inspiration and teacher of mine, writes of a flower bath they would prepare for their new born babies in the village. Water from the very centre of their most sacred lake would be combined with special flowers picked from the jungle to create a special ‘bath’ for the welcoming and protection of all new babies. They would bathe in the water infused with the flowers and receive the wisdom and healing of the sacred lake and the flowers. There are many examples of these flower essences being used for both medical and emotional/spiritual purposes in tribal peoples from all over the world.
Once you discover the secret world of flower essences, you will fall in love with their gentle, but enlightening guidance, just as I did. The realisations and healings I’ve received from these beautiful, divine expressions of nature can be as gentle as a rain drop falling off a leaf, or a powerful dream that can leave you feeling shaken to your core. Sometimes they will just bring you the sweet release of much needed tears for the lifting of grief, or a letting go of sadness from unknown sources. They know what you need. Of this I am sure, after twenty years of healing and preparing, and dosing both animals and people, I trust them completely with the most delicate and vulnerable parts of my soul, and the souls of my precious family, pets, friends and clients.
If you would like to know how to pick the right flower essence for you, put as much weight in the attraction of how it looks to you visually as you do to what the written description says. They communicate through colour and shape, if you love the look of it, it has a teaching for you. Equally if you don’t like the look of it, there may be a teaching for you in that as well, for you had a strong reaction to something!
Have fun looking through the flower essences I have carefully and intuitively prepared for you in ‘https://seahorseoracle.com/shop/’
