Communing with the Elder Mother #1: 22 July, 2012

Pathworkings are a fabulous method with which to facilitate an intimate connection with the Deva of any given plant or herb for the purposes of using it in both herbal medicine or magick!  This method  is even useful when working with store-bought dried herbs...we may project ourselves backward in time and converse with the Deva in the still-living herb.

Count yourself down into the Alpha state of Consciousness.  Now, "see" before yourself the Elder bush that grows nearest to yourself--hear the crickets chirp, the birds sing, and observe the butterflies dancing atop the wild flowers...

An oil painting by by mid-19th. Century 
British artist, Arthur Rackham; I was surprised
when I saw this image because the depicted 
"Mother" greatly resembled my own visionary 
encounter with the Elder Mother!

With reverence step close to the Elder and kindly greet the in-dwelling Elder Mother who resides within the shrub.  Plants are uniquely sentient and can sense our presence, as well as our intentions.  Indeed, as I approached the Elder in my mind--as I have, before, with an elm tree on my property during my Waking Life--I could feel her sentience, her consciousness.  The very ground beneath me seemed to yield and to move, almost as if there were earthworms crawling beneath my feet.

I could feel how lonely she was, and how innately suspicious she was of the motives of humans.  It was at this point that I explained to her that, had I but known she was less than a block away from my front door I would have paid my respects long ago.  As I focussed my attention on the verdant green elder bush my own sense of reality seemed to warp as though it were a mere sheer curtain delicately placed atop another dimensional frequency.  I could suddenly see the home of the Elder Mother as she bid me to enter with merely a warm maternal expression.  She was quite elderly--like a grandmother--and was barely three feet in height with blue-grey hair that seemed pulled back in two "buns" at either side of the back of her head.  her complexion was also ashen, but she wasn't in poor health; I think this may have been the natural color of her skin, much like the bark of the very Elder bush itself.  I acknowledged that I was pleased to have met her and assured her that I would regularly stop by, either visually or physically.  She thanked me with a wry smile and handed me a bowl of nourishment that seemed to resemble white rice, albeit was gleaming white like a bowl full of pearls.  The bowl was even unusual; it had the texture of heavy and soft leather; in fact, if I didn't know better I'd have sworn that it was fresh clay from the earth that had been fashioned into a bowl.  (I have done that very thing as a child.)

It was shortly after this moment that I bid my adieu to the Elder Mother, at least for the moment.  However, like many dealing with the World of the Fey I realized that words are a poor method of communication; she seemed to understand and interpret my feelings at any moment's instance.  One could almost say that our hearts and minds had been connected at a quantum level.