The Spagyric Report Returns

(The work has been ongoing, but the blogging-well, you know...)

Back in October, when the Sun, the Moon and Venus were all in Libra, I put together the ingredients for the Venus tincture, 1/4 ounce of home grown and dried rose petals, even divided between pink and white (currently, we do not grow any other color roses) and the Everclear. 1/4 ounce doesn't sound like a lot, but when you are talking dried flower petals, the volume is significant.

My notes read: The pink roses had faded to sepia, except on the inside bases of the petals where they were still pink. The white rose petals were still white, except at the very edges of the petals, where they were beginning to brown. There was a very strong fragrance of rose as I crushed the petals. Once in the jar, with the Everclear poured over the rose petals the scent of the flowers became even more pronounced, as if the scent molecules were being carried aloft by any instantly evaporating alcohol. The Everclear picked up an almost gold tinge, but mostly seemed to magnify and emphasize the details of the petals in the jar. I wrapped the jar tightly, labeled it, and put it aside.

And there is sat, for months and months. When I first started this project, I went by the directions I had been given, having no experience with spagyrics. The time frame for the creation of each tincture was pretty short-as long as the moon phase was appropriate for the part of the job to be done, the actual time elapsed didn't seem that important. But as I've gone along, I've gotten far better as listening to the herb and tincture and working on that time frame. And Venus kept saying "Not yet. Patience." (so has Sun, which, as you may note, does not yet have a dropper bottle.)

This spring, with Venus, Sun and Mercury in Taurus was time. In fact, maybe having to do with the Moon in Leo, it was quite emphatically time. Six months had elapsed since I had put the herbs up to steep, but from the sensations I was getting from the bottle, I wouldn't have been surprised in the least had it been 9 months (I was a little disappointed, when looking at my notes and the calendar, that it wasn't 9 months.)

When I strained the rose petals out of the liquid, they crumbled and nearly disintegrated under their own weight. The menstruum was a deep gold, and the scent was heady and very sweet, but not noticeably rose-like. When lit, the petals burned to a fine ash very quickly, and once cooled, dissolved into the purified water without any residue. The crystals that formed out of the evaporated water were colorless, but very very bright. They were even and consistent in shape, and (for once!) easy to scrape out of the plate and back into the menstruum.


The taste/use/effect of this tincture? It is all sweet things, but not cloying. There is no scent or taste of roses, instead imagine the most perfectly ripe persian or honeydew melon. In fact, it brought to mind the idea of "round." Not a circle, a sphere. Whole. A deep, unrestricted breath. The idea that all the ideas, all the symbols that artists and mystics try to cram into the Empress Card of the tarot is sitting in this little dropper bottle, waiting for me so that I might know them.

Somehow, "cool stuff" just doesn't cover it.