We wanted to tell you about this new Bloom Book, which is all about flower essences. What could be lovelier or more essential?
From lavender’s ability to soothe frazzled nerves to rose’s charms in healing the heart, flowers don’t just delight the senses―they have a secret history as doorways to transformation. With The Bloom Book, Heidi Smith of Moon & Bloom offers a holistic and comprehensive guide for working with flower essences―the vibrational signatures of our botanical allies―to bring about healing, awakening, and deep change.
A psychosomatic therapist, flower essence practitioner, registered herbalist, and long-time student of ancient wisdom traditions, Heidi integrates the healing power of flower essences with vibrational medicine and the rise of the divine feminine. The result is a cosmic doctrine of healing that empowers readers to align with their highest selves and help to bring about planetary transformation.
Filled with gorgeous illustrations by artist Chelsea Granger, The Bloom Book is both an information-rich resource and interactive guidebook for anyone who wants to awaken their most vibrant, balanced, and empowered self through the healing power of flower essences. Below Heidi generously shares an excerpt from the book on using flower essences together with ritual and a sneak peek at some of the gorgeous illustrations from the book.
Ritual and Flower Essences
A ritual is any practice you perform with intention. Like the symbol of the rainbow, rituals connect the physical world with the nonphysical plane and provide more ways for us to enact our dreams and potentials. Flower essences work so powerfully with ritual because they work at highly subtle, refined levels—at the level of spirit. Rituals work in a similar frequency, with the energy of intention, prayer, affirmation, and offering. Because ritual engages the spirit or energetic level of your practice, flower essences are perfectly attuned to support this type of work.
Rituals are intentional practices that connect me more intimately with myself, with others, with my ancestors and guides, with nature, and with Spirit. They help engender greater trust within my own heart wisdom. This book owes much to the ritual I created around writing, wherein I would ground, pray, and take a flower essence before sitting down to compose. Engaging in ritual work is a way to give back beyond the level of self: you can offer a ritual for a group of people, a place, to animals that might need your prayers, or even the elements, like a sacred body of water. Rituals can serve as potent ceremonies to support healing change on both astral and physical levels, when a physical intervention is not possible—for example, prayer for an interpersonal conflict when dialogue isn’t an option.
People seek out my help because they would like to connect with their spiritual selves and cultivate a spiritual practice. Rituals are a big part of this cultivation. However you are guided to pray and practice, this is your own, unique medicine, and you can trust that this is a natural way to heal. One of the lessons of the moon is to learn to trust our intuition. Allow her to guide you to explore in your rituals. Working in the flow of natural rhythms, connecting with our tribes, celebrating and honoring life and death, and making medicine are all parts of moon ritual wisdom.
I highly recommend creating a space of your own, sometimes referred to as an altar, to cultivate this work. It could be connected to your apothecary, or in a separate area. Your altar is a private sanctuary for your ritual and spiritual work. Some elements it could include are a candle, any sacred objects, flowers, stones, shells, leaves; or pictures of people, ancestors, animals, or places that are very important to you. It can be very simple. You may keep a protective or clearing flower essence there such as yarrow or moxa. The etymology of the word altar is to “raise up,” so think of your altar as a living space of peace, potential, and magic. The more time you spend cultivating your spiritual practice in your healing space, the more you will harness and ground the energy into a powerful practice.
For the Recentering Ritual below, you may want to take a single flower essence or a blend. You may work with either store-bought essences, ones you’ve wildcrafted yourself, or both. Flower essence mists are also a great option to use in spaces either before, after, or in between healing work. I like to add a few drops of essential oil to my mist as well, such as rose, neroli, or violet.
Some recommendations of flower essences for inviting grounding, safety, and protection:
● Flower Essence Society’s pink yarrow—for appropriate emotional boundaries; overly absorbent auric field; dysfunctional merging with others.
● Delta Gardens’ red cedar—offers stability, wisdom, and rootedness during times of turbulence.
● Delta Gardens’ Protection Set—angelica, cinquefoil, garlic, pennyroyal, rue, St. John’s wort, yarrow; protection blend of all seven essences.
● Alaskan Essences’ Soul Support—cattail pollen, chalice well, cotton grass, fireweed, labrador tea, malachite, river beauty, ruby, white fireweed; brings strength and stability during emergencies, stress, trauma and transformation.
● Delta Gardens’ Clearing—angelica, goldenseal, sweet annie, moxa; a blend that helps to clear the system of any influences that disrupt the free flow of energy.
~ Heidi Smith, from The Bloom Book: A Flower Essence Guide to Cosmic Balance
