By Isabella @TheWandCarver
Instagram: @iseabail_witchwriter
Take a moment and imagine, if you will, the scent of Lavender when you first pluck a stem of it and rub the tiny leaves. Let the aroma envelope your senses and your mind be cast to a simpler and happier time. Breathe deeply and exhale slowly, inhaling positivity and exhaling negativity… Do you feel refreshed now? I do simply by writing this paragraph. Lavender is the most powerfully relaxing herb/flower I know of. …. It is no wonder why Lavender is often called “The Tranquillity Herb”.
One of the things I like best about ironing clothes [yes, I still do that!] is to spray lavender water on my personal items [my son might not like smelling like lavender!] before setting the hot iron to them. At one time I also used a lavender washing powder I had found online. Never until later did I find out that I was following a long-held English custom which apparently began when the Romans invaded. Roman soldiers would put lavender in their bath water and do their washing with it as well. Because of this association, during medieval times, laundresses [washerwomen] were called “lavenders”. More often than not, these lavenders were also prostituting for supplemental income as the washerwoman did not make a living wage, so the name lavender took on a double meaning. An anonymous 16th-century poet wrote:
Thou shalt be my lavender
To wash and clean all my gear
Our two beds shall be set
Without any let
Magickal
One of the key ingredients in both our Love Witch Bottle and in our Empath Rescue Witch Bottle is Lavender. Obviously for love, but in the Empath bottle, Lavender is also for protection, peace of mind, and purification of the depressing aura which can sometimes envelope even the strongest empath.
Lavender can, as above-mentioned, be used for purification bathing. Lavender water can not only be sprayed onto clothing before ironing to impart its scent but to be sprayed in your power circle for rituals to bring purification and protection within it.
Lavender is an excellent sleep aid and one of my favourite things to have near me at night is my Lavender bag created by Jacqui Livesay Art on Etsy. Of course, you can make your own. These can also be used to help you to strengthen your mental and psychic powers during divination. Making a talisman for this purpose is the ultimate way to induce your psychic powers by placing an Amethyst crystal along with lavender herb in a drawstring bag and wearing around your neck when engaged in tarot readings, casting runes or ogham staves, and pendulum dowsing. Lavender is also said to promote visions during readings of any kind.
Love spells and fertility spells are always helped along by Lavender. Use it in poppets, sachets, and loose incenses for these purposes. Wearing the scent of Lavender alone can attract love to you.
Dried Lavender makes excellent smudge sticks.
Healing
Whom else would I turn for advice on healing by herbs/flowers/woods, and the like except Nicholas Culpeper, author of the world famous The Complete Herbal and English Physician? Although the writings are over 300 years old, much of what he wrote then holds true to this day. For example, “It [Lavender] provokes women’s courses, and expels the dead child and after-birth”. Whether the birth was ‘intended’ to be early or if the pregnancy had gone full-term, but the child was known to be dead in the womb prior to its birth, Lavender brought on the immediate dismissal of the foetus from its mother’s womb. It is now why I interject a warning to all expectant mothers to never use any Lavender oil or herb by ingestion or otherwise to be safe. I don’t know how much is “enough” but please don’t take any risks. Also, he says, “two spoonfuls of the distilled water of the flowers taken, helps them that have lost their voice” which is what my Nana prescribed me when I had a case of the laryngitis after reading aloud a book about Florence Nightingale to my mum at the dining room table one night. It worked. Culpeper also goes on to say that it is not only good to drink for certain maladies but is also does the job by applying onto temples and smelling through the nostrils to stop tremblings, faintings, and swooning. He also wrote that “The chymical oil drawn from Lavender, usually called Oil of Spike, is of so fierce and piercing a quality, that it is cautiously to be used, some few drops being sufficient, to be given with other things, either for inward or outward griefs.”
Correspondences
Planetary: Mercury
Gender: Masculine
Zodiac: Virgo
Element: Air
Powers: Love, Protection, Sleep, Chastity, Longevity, Purification, Happiness, and Peace
Deity: Aphrodite, Venus, Bastet, Isis, Tawaret, Brigid, Cernunnos
Other Names: Elf Leaf, Nard, Nardus, Spike
I hope you have enjoyed and have found something useful to your practise in my blog. Warmest blessings to all whom this way wander x
Sources
The Complete Herbal and English Physician, by Nicholas Culpeper
The Encyclopaedia of Magical Herbs, by Scott Cunningham
Experience
WytchenCrafts 