Before our herbal alchemy spagyric making course with Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris), I asked if there was something the Mugwort deva would like as an offering. “Make mugwort beer” was the clear response and was shown a picture of the Mugwort I was to use. I’d been in a quandary as to which Mugwort to use for the spagyric – the traditional vulgaris or the one that grows locally like a weed – Artemisia verlotianum/Chinese mugwort. But when I tuned in directly to ask, there was no question at all that it was to be Artemisia vulgaris. For the beer however, I was to use the verlotianum.
Having never made beer before, it took me a while to gather the equipment required and to find a recipe. It seemed a significant request though. Mugwort was the original herb used to brew beer before Hops began being used centuries ago. I made a totally dark beer version using sticky molasses. It had the feel of ancient beer and long after our alchemical journey completed, we gathered to toast the Mugwort deva and the journey we had just been on.
The alchemical journey begins…
We gathered in circle to meet and greet Mugwort first. Many say Mugwort is ruled by Venus, though some say the Moon. Being an Artemisia (Artemis is goddess of the moon) I was leaning towards the moon so set up our alchemy course for Monday’s, but I was by no means sure and went into our first meeting with the mugwort deva with an open mind. Show me!
It was super clear after a very short time that Mugwort is definitely a plant of the Moon, even if there may be the odd planetary overlap. She sent a series of plant signature downloads to illustrate her point: the silvery backs of the leaves, the tiny moonlike flowers (Venus is showy like Aphrodite), the arrow like leaves reminiscent of Artemis’ arrows. She showed that there were flowers in all phases…. maiden mother and crone (fresh, full and drying), and glowed with a silvery white light within my third eye. The two sides of the leaves…. one silvery, one green spoke of the different faces – the seen and the unseen, and there was a quality of merging felt in the silver sides of the leaves.
When I asked how to give back to her, what she would like as a group offering from us, the answer was something akin to being drawn into her energy, “to go deeply and give freely.” It is only in retrospect that I can see how deeply serious she was. She required a significant level of depth, of journeying far to meet her and of looking deeply within from each one of us. Not for the superficial is Mugwort! The Moon rules deep inner vision, insight, dreaming. This played out in many aspects such as not wanting to go further inwards or see a bigger picture and one teaching that came up over the weeks was around judgment. Judging others comes from a superficial look at them. Mugwort teaches us to go much deeper than surface level. It is when we don’t understand the intricacies of a situation or person that we judge. When we go deeper, there is always understanding and compassion.
As we were digging up the Mugwort plant, all hands were required. We wove together in and out to gently remove all parts of the plant with care. It was here, that the protection aspects of Mugwort came through loud and clear. Energetic clearing of the space had been very necessary in the lead up, and then we were interrupted by some “less than desirable” energies in the form of two disrespectful men being insulting and attempting to raise a reaction. Nothing happens by accident when you’re in the cauldron of alchemy! I held firm but felt shaken after. Interestingly this challenge was revisited in the final phase of our burial ceremony. This time we had been alchemised with Mugwort and as a group we stood firm, wove our energies together, sang and gave little energy to the situation just metres away which slowly dissipated (after an initial rise) when we paid little attention to it. It felt like a final test that we passed with flying colours.
Mugwort has long been known to provide protection in the energetic realms and worn as a protection amulet. It is especially useful for the mucky energies of substance abuse, and is used particularly to antidote the misuse of cannabis. So at the current time when cannabis is a fad wonder drug touted as being good for everything, Mugwort is a very needed herb to reweave the threads and help us move out of these illusions. As @dancetheweave (a very Mugwort seer herself) received: Mugwort is one of three master protectors of the plant world.
Maiden, mother and crone – The Great Mother
Tuning deeply into Mugwort is to tap into the Great Mother. The Great Mother is maiden mother and crone all at once, she is all of the seasons in one, and she is Mother of all children including spirit babies who she returns home. She cares for all equally and makes sure the quiet ones don’t slip through the cracks and become overshadowed. All beings are her children and none more important than another.
Ancestry
People commonly feel they’ve met an ancestor when feeling Mugworts energy. She feels so familiar, like coming home. My feeling is this is because she taps us into the Great Mother who is mother of all; the beginning and the end, creator and destroyer. As ancestor to everyone, she is cosmic mother. And Mugwort can help journey us along our own ancestral lines to find her at the centre, weaving the threads of destiny and holding all within her tapestry. Like a spider at the centre of the great cosmic web of life.
But more than that, she helps us journey along the threads of our DNA, the threads woven by our ancestors in order to unravel and reweave aspects that are unhealthy. More on this later.
Vision & Journeying; Third eye.
Mugwort is a journey plant, it can help you see the unseen, gain a bigger picture of things, and protect you along the way. Whether this is through dreaming, astral travel or shamanic journey, Mugwort can help you fly beyond the smoke and mirrors of your own version of reality. Beyond the personal matrix and into the greater cosmic web of creation.
For those who work with power animals (animal guides that protect and lead through other realms), Mugwort is like a power animal in plant form. She guides us along the threads of destiny to the place of our intention and protects us along the way.
Mugwort is a herb of vision. A superficial look at her and she will simply mirror your reflections. “Smoke and mirrors” delusions, projections and illusions are all an aspect of her shadow side. Basically you’ll see what you want to see. Think crystal ball fortune telling in the hazy smoke of Mugwort to fool or create a smokescreen. Or the ways we do this to ourselves! The haze of substance overuse, especially the grey aura of cannabis that keeps us in denial while under the illusion we are “connected.” (This is one of the homeopathic provings of cannabis).
On the flip side, Mugwort can take you beyond the reflections of your own projected world to see a bigger picture. But before we do that, we need to heal any wounds we have to seeing. There can be so many reasons we keep our inner vision/third eye closed and not wanting to see. Maybe we once used our inner sight for personal gain, or despite ‘seeing’ we could do nothing to change an outcome; maybe we missed seeing something that had huge consequences and have never forgiven ourselves. The different possibilities of past traumas woven into our psyche are endless.
The first layer of Mugwort is to heal and unwind these wounds in order to take the next step…. to awaken the inner seer, the eye who sees all. This is not necessarily a quick process! Unravelling these threads can take time and a fair amount of letting go of previous held notions!
The Master Weaver
Mugwort is master weaver of the tapestry of destiny we live in. Tapping into Mugwort is to tap into the threads of the web we are woven into. There are layers and you will see as far as you’re meant to. But remember…. there are always more!
Most probably you’ll visit your personal weave first. Tapping into the threads of our weave, we can begin to unravel who we are, and if we choose, to reweave certain aspects. We may find threads running our life that come from deep in our ancestry, our current life, or previous lives – of wounds or old beliefs, designed to protect yet now holding us back.
For our personal threads are the weaving of our DNA. They carry rich veins of blessings, along with countless traumas, vows, memories and seeds built from the past. Not all of these will be valuable or relevant for you in the present and yet they may still be running you. Mugwort takes us back to the areas that may need repair or reweaving so that we can choose to let the rich gems in our bloodlines unfold rather than be ruled by ancient traumas.
It is the threads of our lives that create our future. Who we are in this moment now – whatever we are feeling, believing and subtly perceiving as truth is creating not only our future but our past! This is another Mugwort teaching. When we become conscious of how we are really seeing the world, we can unravel and reweave it in this very moment. Again, Mugwort works DEEPLY, in the dark caves of our underground consciousness. But this is where the root of our woven web lies. Like a spider at the centre of the web that it has created from its inner world, so are we the creators of our destiny – from our own inner workings – whether they are conscious or unconscious.
Unravelling and reweaving is a big part of Mugworts vision medicine. Mugwort is akin to the Norns or the Weavers of Destiny, the Three fates – those who spin the thread of life, weave its tapestry and cut the final thread of life. Maiden, mother and crone all at once, she knows intimately all parts of the cycle are valuable – including death. Mugwort can take us along these threads to meet the Weaver of our Destiny and rework the tapestry of our lives. She will not do the healing for you, but she will show up the threads and support you in the process.
Mugwort and the Womb
The womb is the inner mother. The cauldron that holds space for the process of creation. As we’ve already noted, Mugwort is the Great Mother of the cosmos – the cosmic womb. The physical womb is like the fractal smaller mother or personal weaver of our realm.
One persistent image and feeling that arose during the alchemy, was a sensation of the threads that were being woven between the women in the circle. These threads that we were weaving with our alchemical work formed the base of a cauldron in the shape of a rounded pot. Like an etheric womb woven between each of us in the circle, creating a collective womb space.
Mugwort has a known action on the muscles and there is I had the sense that rather than working on the womb directly, it is more the underlying seat of the womb – the muscles of the pelvic floor where its action potentially lies. The pelvic basin. The Great Mother of All that underlies and gives birth to every other mother/matrix/womb. The pelvic bowl is our vessel of receiving, just as menstruation is the time of weaving the next cycle.
Mugwort had a theme of integrity – in relation to the way we walk in the world, in the way we weave our world, but also the integrity of this foundational bowl of the pelvic floor – the seat of life. If it is too tight, then things don’t land properly. If it is too loose, then all falls through. The integrity of our weave is important.
One of Mugwort’s ‘seat of influences’ is in the muscles. Spasms, epilepsy, tics and twitches throughout the body. Feeling of muscles contracting as if squeezing out old energy. Sensation like they were releasing stuck energy, clearing the old, but on a muscular level. The Mugwort seemed to reach into weaker areas of the body, where there was stuckness and tension. Again there was the sense that Mugwort reaches into old memories stored in the body and helps release them. In the release comes the movement – e.g. spasms, as the body reworks itself. Around this time, I watched a video of a woman whose body was in uncontrollable spasms for several days ever since having the covid vaccine. Watching her body spasm and twitch like she had no control over herself anymore, while telling her story, my body was reminded of the feeling of Mugwort moving through my body. A sense of much needing to be cleared and moved through the muscles. The body was doing what it needed to do.
Warmth
Mugwort has a theme of warmth. It is warming and drying and useful for cold, damp conditions. Moxa or burning some of the dried leaves is a great application of Mugwort. We will come back to this briefly.
Deep deep deep and warm
The seed before dawn
Deep deep deep and held
Holding holding meld
Foot on path, hand on heart, speak the truth
One two three, back to me, I will soothe.
Mugwort inspired poem by Tahl Lowers
Rue and Mugwort.
Both Rue and Mugwort are herbs of vision and second sight. Rue continually popped up when working with Mugwort – at a certain stage in our alchemical process, and also when we worked through Mugwort medicine with the Flower Codes Training a few months ago.
Rue is the Herb of Grace, of divine flow and also the herb of repentance for when you step out of divine grace. When we step out of grace, we are walking the path of ego, pride and hubris where we believe we can do it alone. Where we close our eyes to the oneness of the spirit that lives within all. This is a state of blindness and herein lies the overlap with Mugwort.
Both Rue and Mugwort open the vision. We can use Rue when we need to clear our vision from ego, pride, resistance and control that are general indicators of the ego ruling. The need for Rue may be needed before or alongside Mugwort in order to see beyond the smoky mirror of our creation. We also may need Rue after using Mugwort to help us to heal and repent for our hubris in believing we are in control and forgetting the Great Mother of creation and Master Weaver!
Mugwort medicine
A more personal journey with Mugwort.
For several months I began experiencing womb tension in the week before my bleed. When tuning into it I discovered the source to be 3 strands of tightly woven tissue and that there was a story being held there that was very limiting. It was a 3D version of reality tightly bound and that I was clinging to. The feeling of releasing it felt overwhelming, like it would bring epic change…. I felt dizzy at the thought. This was a month before our alchemy with Mugwort began. On inner guidance, I booked a womb hara session in with Jodie @yinempresshealing. She wasn’t available for several weeks and the appointment happened to be in the middle of our Mugwort alchemy, which Jodie had also decided to attend. In this womb session I set the intention to release the strands of control that were restricting me and to surrender into the arms of the cosmos (yep all very Mugworty!) A great unravelling began then – two layers, the first that my ancestors weren’t happy with me for not having a child (I had to do some explaining and negotiations with them around this), but more than that was the decision itself had been made from a place of lack and fear “I’m too old, I don’t have the energy for it anymore.” This was quite a revelation. Mugwort teaches that how you are now creates your past and your future, so when you’re acting out of fear, you’re keeping yourself in a smaller world of fear. Oops! Time to surrender the control patterns. My decision didn’t change but I needed to make it from a place of love, not from fear/lack. The unravelling took some time, deep inner work, and a big humbling – who the fuck was I to know my destiny and try to control it? Herein lies the Rue overlap with Mugwort again. Around this time, several glass items in the house got shattered (very unusual) – and finally I saw that my illusions had shattered and I could see a little more clearly again.
Collective evolution
At some point in plant alchemy, the inner work you’ve been going through hits the collective realm. What I’m gradually learning after having experienced countless spagyric alchemies done in a co-creative manner, is that this is the place when the evolution of the plant and within the collective begins.
With Mugwort, the theme was something akin to: the finest most invisible threads are equally as important as the big fat dramatic visible threads. They all make up the tapestry of the web we live in. This relates to the threads of our life, but also the people within it. To value all parts equally without judgement….. whether someone is having a big outer experience, or whether someone’s experience is virtually invisible to all but themselves, we must honour and respect them equally. In group or circle work this means maintaining firm boundaries to protect the integrity of the circle as a whole, but also knowing that if the integrity is compromised – to surrender to that too and repair it together without going into control, fear or any other story around it. It is what it is.
Can you see how that fits into the collective right now?
Can we hold all parts and accept them as they are?
The Great Mother treats all equally, none are more important. She holds space for all.
Summary
Obviously there’s lots about Mugwort that I haven’t covered in here, though the idea is to get a feel for the depth of her core medicine, who she is at the deepest essence. When you work at this level, plants can do things you would never expect!
So in summary. Mugwort is a journey plant. She will take you along the threads of your own weaving, so that you can unravel and reweave parts of your life that are no longer serving you. She will open your eyes to aspects of yourself that are working out of fear or from outdated beliefs. She will take you along the threads of your ancestors to the source of the tension, to what requires unraveling so as to bring consciousness to this pattern so that you can choose whether you want to keep creating from that place. She helps you see your deep inner workings and the way you are creating.
These old patterns and outdated beliefs, may be not even from this lifetime, will be held in the body, frozen. Mugwort warms the cold parts and gently encourages us to unravel these frozen threads, to unravel old patterns, beliefs, traumas. There may be corresponding muscular release as the shift occurs, but it is just the body’s way of squeezing out the old.
Once we go beyond the weavings or mirrors of our own personal truth, we can travel further into a larger truth. To rest in the arms of the cosmic mother and to trust the weaving of a the great web of life that contains all beings within it. While we create our reality based on what we are projecting onto the world via our beliefs etc., there is also a bigger truth – that we are also just one thread in the whole fabric of creation.
So Mugwort will first help you to find and unravel unhealthy weavings in your own tapestry and the way you are creating your world. When you have done a lot of this work, then Mugwort can help you travel further into a deeper and greater reality or perspective of the world. She can help you to tune into your original nature, the gold veins within your DNA. And then to travel beyond into the cosmic realms, to see far – to support you to astral travel, remote view etc. But it is important to do the clearing work first. For seeing further brings great responsibility and the need for integrity. The deeper into our unconscious realm or the farther we travel into new realms (which are the same thing), the more compassion is needed. This is not something to do in an instant as it requires deeper inner work, but the Great Mother herb is here to support you and guide you if you are ready.
To purchase a 30ml bottle of Mugwort spagyric essence visit shop here.
To stay in touch for the next Herbal Alchemy Spagyric course
sign up to the course update list here.
Leave a Reply