Rose Moon - Magical Summer Apothecary Kit

Rose Medicine - Lore, Liberation, and Practical Application

This book is an offering to the Queen of the Garden - Rose - it meanders through fascinating ancient lore, stories of miracles, practical information on rose as a medicine and herbal ally, and loads of beautiful ideas and recipes for bringing her magic into your kitchen, medicine cabinet, body care routines, and ritual practices. Perhaps most distinct, is the earth-honoring, feminist, liberation-oriented lens through which we see both, her story and her offerings.

On the authenticating power of attraction and desire -

“When we know our desires or instincts as holy, we are less likely to accept externally-imposed bounds or limitations - we are less likely to settle for living by lies… Long before we have words for our longings, we feel them in our bodies. The Rose, as Aphrodite’s emissary, reawakens us to our bodily knowing and our sacred desires. She calls us into consciousness, authenticity, and direct relationship with earth’s astounding spiritual forces. Responding to our senses gives us pause, calls into what we know inside of ourselves, and grants us an opportunity for unbinding - an invitation into liberation of mind, body, soul, and culture.”

On what we leave in our wake as legacy -

“As we study and listen deeply to Traditional Ecological Knowledge, whether that be medicine practices of the Great Lakes Region, the food forests of Southern India, or fire management of Aboriginal peoples, we are reminded of our responsibility to honor what we know in our cells - the earth is wise beyond measure and we must work with, not against her, following her intelligent lead. I have come to see this way of life not as leaving “no trace”, but as leaving a beautiful trace. While colonizer culture and white supremacist patriarchy hold a wanton disregard for the earth’s inherent value and intelligence, and this unexamined worldview plays out even in the modern, white version of “conservation”, there are older, wiser, and more lasting ways of being with place and the family of creation. From a perspective of love and respect for the earth, the ways that we interact with and affect plants, animals, and the elements are not referred to as “management” (as in “land management” or “wildlife management”) they are seen as relationship. Our values determine how those relationships play out…

Moving through life with respect for the earth absolutely leaves “traces” but these traces may not be visible to the untrained eye. In the wake of love and respect for the earth, we see blooming roses, bountiful berries, clean water, happy creatures, and elder trees shimmering in the breeze. If we haven’t been taught to recognize the traces left by a loving touch - to know that our careful harvests build the health of plant communities and help them thrive - we could miss this entirely.”

Shimmering Dawn - Unbinding of the Heart Elixir - Flower Essence/Gem Elixir Blend

Shimmering Dawn, a medicine of mercy, is at the heart of the inspiration for this entire magical apothecary kit - bringing a softening touch to the places in our bodies and our psyches where we carry trauma, distrust, and a need for healing, it restores our permission to shine on the deepest levels. Over many decades of doing hands-on healing work with people from all walks of life, I have learned that the deepest and most calcified wounds, wounds that are often invisible to us, ask the gentlest approach. This is what Shimmering Dawn offers. Resonant medicines are truly amazing at moving subtly into the layers of our beings and experience, shifting how we feel, how we breathe, receive, perceive, and live. Loosening the grip of personal, ancestral, and culturally imposed trauma, and flooding our beings with rose gold light, Shimmering Dawn helps restore us to the web of relationship and a sense of sanctuary within. 

Ingredients made in a base of Lebanese rosewater with organic brandy as a preservative and a touch of local raw honey, this potion contains the following resonant medicines:

Flower Essences 

• Pink Evening Primrose - Repatterning Our Beginnings

  Pink evening primrose works at a deep, preverbal level of our being to clear generational and cultural trauma, and/or disturbing impressions from our time in utero. Soothing, rocking, containing, and restoring us to a sense of belonging and being welcomed at a deep core level.

• Crabapple - Honoring the Child Self

  Crabapple touches the child self - bringing healing and faith in our essential lovability. Addressing and helping to dissolve self-contempt that often sets in following traumatic or invasive experiences - Crabapple helps us to honor innocence, childlike wonder, and the value in following our dreams. 

• Wild Rose - Protecting Self-Love and Co-creative Fire

  Wild Rose is the Mother, Lover, and take-no-shit Elder all in one! She restores our permission and ability to exist in our complete authenticity, improves our instincts, and helps us to clearly recognize and choose relationships and situations that are worthy of our beauty. 

Gem Elixirs

• Pink Pearl - supports cognitive and spiritual alignment, the ability to see, hold and integrate the value in life lessons from deep emotional experiences.

• Rose Quartz - self-love, self-love, and self-love - rose quartz helps with softening and shedding everything but the truth!

• Rhodochrosite - womb and/or sacral healing. Rhodochrosite helps loosen the grip and presence of any energies, including feelings of low self-worth, that arise from sexualized or bodily trauma. In a culture that treats bodies as objects - we all need these layers of healing and reclamation.

Use - Three drops daily, or as needed, in water, tea, your bath, libations you are offering, etc.

Among many other things, you will find more on what to expect when working with flower essences in the teachings portion of this offering.

Love Magic - Rose Dipped Candle

These little beauties are for summoning the love and the supportive forces you need into your life. Layered with pure golden beeswax and beeswax that is plant-dyed to a beautiful dusty rose, (you may see traces of the plant medicine in them) I have hand dipped each one, singing, praying, and holding a powerful intention to bring healing, freedom, and liberation into your hearts and into our world. Embodying the colors of Aphrodite’s “rose gold dawn”, the honey scent of beeswax, and prayers for your wellbeing, these babies support softening, opening, and the phenomenal concept and experience of learning through pleasure. 

Use - each candle comes wrapped in a scroll with a prayer/incantation to invoke, invite, and awaken a self-loving state of being. I recommend anointing this candle with your Shimmering Dawn Elixir and lighting it for the first time with space and time to open to this intention and shape it for yourself. The most important thing in this process is sincerity - make a special space in your home, maybe put down a small cloth, or a circle of roses, or whatever helps to create a place of beauty and containment for your intention, and place the candle at the center. (I like to burn these plump beauties in a small, low bowl, but you can use a votive holder too. Depending on the shape of the holder/bowl, I sometimes hold fire to the bottom of the candle to secure it to the surface.) Read the scroll and/or use your own words to evoke images of what a life well-lived looks like to you - a life in which you are free and supported to grow and thrive like summer’s most beautiful roses in the garden - then strike a match and bring this medicine home! You can burn the candle all at once in a slow, deep, single transformation ritual blessing or you can burn it a little at a time, over time.

Rose Moon - Old Skin Sloughing - Summer Scrub/Soak - Pink Salt Rose Mint

Healing doesn’t happen without shedding, and shedding is much easier when accompanied by love. What a joy for our process of healing, transformation, and shedding old selves to be supported by gorgeous, sexy, sensual, and medicinal body care. This recipe, which features sultry rose and brightly beautiful garden mint, is simultaneously entrancing and uplifting - you can actually feel yourself getting lighter as you work with it. 

Ingredients - pink Himalayan salt, sea salt, organic rose petals, organic homegrown garden mint, organic attar of roses, and Shimmering Dawn elixir.

Use - this is a versatile herbal preparation - you can simply add it to your bath as a soak, make an infusion of it to pour over yourself as you shower, or use it as a cooling and uplifting summertime foot soak. However, my absolute favorite way to work with the magic of Rose Moon - Skin Sloughing is as a whole body scrub. To do this, place about 1 T of mild/neutral oil (such as lite olive, safflower, almond or so) in a small bowl and mix in enough Rose Moon to create a consistency you like. In a bath or shower, place some of this mix into one hand and rub it between your palms to get the magic brewing and awaken the scent. Scrub your bod from head to toe gently but persistently and ask for help letting go of what it’s time to shed. When you are finished, allow the waters to carry away and transmute what you have surrendered.

Amber Rose Body Balm

Made with beautiful, all natural ingredients, Amber Rose Body Balm is one of my oldest and dearest body care preparations. Our skin is a sacred boundary, container, and breathable shield between us and all that we encounter in the rest of the world - tending lovingly to our skin helps us to decide and affirm what we are willing, and unwilling, to allow into our own sacred space.

I only make this lush body balm on special occasions and have been blown away by the way it sells out every time. With hints of sultry earth, warming sun, and heady rose - this balm completes your self-loving rituals by nourishing your skin and sealing in the good vibes you have conjured. 

Ingredients - organic calendula infused organic light olive oil, organic coconut oil, local beeswax, filtered water, organic essential oil of rose, amber resin, Shimmering Dawn Elixir, and a touch of food grade golden mica. 

Use - apply generously and intentionally to your beautiful bod after a bath, shower, and/or self-blessing ritual.

This lovely little bookmark not only helps you enjoy and keep track of your journey through the Rose Medicine book, it also has a QR code on the back that will take you, or anyone you gift this kit to, directly to a beautiful webpage that hosts the body of teachings, stories, and ritual practices that accompany Rose Moon Magical Apothecary Kit. We hope you enjoy!