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.

Garden Blogging

Lavender, at dusk. Soothing, no?

I haven't completely figured it out, but the years that are good for the roses aren't good years for the lavender. The good lavender years are not good rose years, either. This is a lavender year.

You will just have to take my word for it, but I've been busy.

About a year ago, maybe a little longer, my pizza cutter went missing. We had pizza for dinner, and I went to the drawer where I keep my cutting tools, and the pizza wheel wasn't there. Over the next week, I searched for it everywhere, figuring that it had just gotten put away in the wrong place. Finally, I decided that it must have gotten left in a pizza delivery box and had gotten thrown away by accident. I never got around to buying another pizza cutter.



Three weeks ago was the start of the season for the variety of apples that I like best for making pies (Greenings, for those who are curious). I went to our local apple farm (the one that grows the heirloom varieties) and brought home a 1/2 bushel of fruit to make into pies. Getting ready to bake, I reached into the drawer where I keep my cutting tools for my "approved by the Amish" apple peeler/corer device. Which was not in the drawer. This is a huge and bulky rotary tool, with a handle that gets stuck every time you open and close the drawer. It was there every time I looked for the pizza cutter, or reached for a knife. It wasn't there now. The pizza cutter was.



I came to the conclusion that we have pictses, or faeries, or borrowers. I haven't actually seen them, so I don't know which. But I guessed they were tired of pizza and wanted some fresh fruit. I used a knife to prepare the apples for the pies. Since I have some truly lovely knives, it wasn't that great a hardship.



But now, they've taken my camera! This is simply not acceptable. And this is why I have no pictures of my projects to accompany this post. Any suggestions on how to ransom my camera back would be appreciated.



I've actually gotten a lot done in the last few days. The most recent batch of incense is finished and packed. I love the scent of saffron. It is rich and heady and intoxicating. I don't use the last word lightly. According to Christian Ratsch in the Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants;

in low dosages, it excites, cheers, and produces laughter ... The psychoactive effects of saffron have been occasionally described as "spasms of laughter" and "delirium" (Vonarburg 1995, 76); "in its effects, saffron comes close to opium."

Culpeper extols saffron for use in "hysteric depressions" but warns;

However, the use of it ought to be moderate and reasonable; for when the dose is too large, it produces a heaviness of the head and sleepiness; some have fallen into an immoderate convulsive laughter, which ended in death.

I cannot imagine how much saffron one must ingest or inhale for such an effect!



Tonight, I also started work on the last tincture of my planetary tincture project. Rose, for Venus in Libra. The roses were homegrown and dried. Since I used no fixative while drying them, they lost nearly all of their color. But when I started crushing the petals, the scent was true and strong, sweet and amazing. When I added the Everclear to the jar, there was almost no color transfer to the liquid. Almost. The liquid did take on the barest tinge of gold and seemed to magnify the rose petals beyond what I would have expected from the refraction of glass and liquid. I am thinking that this is going to be a wonderful finish to the project. I will know in a month or two.



What else, what else?



Baked bread (challah) and started some rye bread (that is a two day project all by itself). Read a novel (Terry Pratchetts "Unseen Academicals"), made a skirt. All in the last two days, all in addition to all the other stuff that somehow gets done.



I may borrow a camera to take pictures of the skirt.



(If you are interested in the saffron incense, and you didn't arrive here via Mrs. B.'s blog, click on the 31 Days of Halloween button. On Saturday October 17, a tube of my incense will be among the giveaways you can try to win. If you did arrive via Mrs. B., Welcome!)

The Sun! The Sun!

Sun in Leo, on Sunday, July 26th, at 2:15 pm, Sun hour. It had been gray and damp and rainy all day (week? summer?), but as I started collecting my tools and ingredients, the sun came out. After I gathered everything I needed, I went outside, into my circle and just tried to absorb the sun. I stood there, feeling it fill me, until my vision went red, then orange, then yellow, and it was coming from me, out, as well as from above.

This tincture is made with dried orange peel, from oranges that we had eaten last winter, after the solstice. The oranges were washed before we peeled them, and then I removed the pith and set the peels out to dry. Once they were dry, I sealed them in a canning jar until I was ready for this project. When I put the peels in the mortar, they were dry enough to snap and break, but they were still full of oil. Rather than grinding them, I had to pound them, hence the large granite mortar, rather than one of the smaller ones. The smell was amazing, full of heat and sunshine.

This is the tincture, after adding the Everclear and then agitating the jar. Unlike several of the other tinctures (Mercury, Saturn, Jupiter) this one did not change color immediately.

I didn't look forward to starting this with much enthusiasm. I think that I was feeling a bit put off still by the feel of the Lunar tincture, which at the New Moon on July 21st was still very "Don't Touch." I was wondering; was it just the nature of the Lunar Tincture? The herb I chose to use? The fact that the herb came from my Mother in Laws garden and had been picked by her for me? (yes, that last thought garnered me a strange look from DH) Now, I think that it was a combination of things, the nature of the tincture and the fact that this most recent New Moon was ALSO a Cancer Moon, just as the Moon was, when I started it. To everything there is a season, right? Things seem a bit cozier with both Sun and Moon tinctures going through their cohabitation phases next to one another...

Saffron

This is a picture of 80 stigma from saffron crocus flowers. It takes approximately 570 of these to make a gram of the dried spice. Which means that I have what will be 14% of a gram of saffron from this years harvest, so far. Luckily, there is more to come.

A picture of the flowers, once I’ve finished the harvesting. Because I don’t destroy the flowers, nor upset the pollen, I can work along side the bees, they don’t seem to mind me, which is pretty cool. And, since the flowers are sterile, in any case, I am not interrupting the lifecycle, either.

The first batch of saffron incense smelled right, but wasn’t the right proportion of saffron to makko, and the cones would not stay lit. I ended up burning them on charcoal, which allowed the new moon/new year ritual to go on, but wasn’t the point of making the incense, as opposed to simply putting the plant matter on the charcoal. The second batch was much better. The scent was only slightly more subtle, but the cone stayed lit and burned thoroughly. Eureka!

Off to do some more research on the ancient associations with saffron, to add to the personal and more modern ones. But I think I have a winner, here.