Yarrow: Achillea millefolium

Yarrow is a master of discernment and a guardian of boundaries. It tends to the barriers of your soul, your energy field and your physical body. A protective spirit , a fierce warrior and a corporeal lover, Yarrow encourages you to root down into your body. With an affinity for the skin (our body’s physical boundary) Yarrow is a legendary wound healer. It staunches bleeding, fights infection, and tightens tissue. It acts similarly with the energy field, making sure not to much of other’s energies get in, making this a great medicine for empaths and those with issues defending their own boundaries and limitations. It also ensures that not to much of our own energies escape, leaving us unattached and disconnected from the body.

Achillea refers to Achilles - The wounded warrior archetype. In Greek myth, Achilles was a powerful warrior and an epic hero who was impervious to injury. His Achille’s heel was his only weakness. As a youth he was dipped into the magical waters of the river Styx, being held by his heel which never touched the water leaving this spot unprotected by his magical armor. This was eventually his downfall, as one day in battle he was struck by a poisoned arrow directly in the heel, leading to his death. This myth illustrates the importance of protecting the barriers which are meant to keep us in and others out. It is a great indication of how this powerful medicine works by protecting the holes in our system that leave us vulnerable to invasion and loss.

Yarrow asks us to be present in the body whether in battle or in the throws of carnal passion. whether in pain or pleasure, your rightful place is in the body. This is your gift and your purpose on the earthly plane.

My Journey with the Spirit of Yarrow:

To begin my plant spirit journeys I always start off by cleaning my altar and my ritual space. I remove everything and wipe it down piece by piece with a damp cloth soaked in warm water and essential oils and I smudge each piece before placing it on the altar. I have a lot of fun redecorating the space intuitively, considering the plant I'm working with and it’s attributes. For yarrow I was feeling the presence of both Mars and Venus. Mars for it’s association with war and the battle field, sharp things, arrows, cuts, and of course I was thinking of Achilles, the wounded warrior hero of Greek myth. Venus for it sensual nature, harmony, beauty and qualities of diplomacy and refinement. Yarrow’s beautiful delicate flowers and it’s soft feathery leaves conjure up the themes of Venus. And so, when decorating my altar I kept this in mind and placed upon it, my favorite ritual athame and a sickle shaped knife I use for harvesting herbs, along with my most Venusian crystals and a soft white rabbit’s hide. I then take a hot bath while consuming the herb. In this instance i poured a strong decoction of Yarrow into the bath as well. Here I begin to call in the plant and I meditate upon my intentions for working with it. After the bath I call in the four quarters, I say a prayer for protection and I appeal to the plant spirit I’m wishing to work with. I then begin ritual drumming and singing, this raises my spirits and allows me to enter the trance state.

In trance with Yarrow I entered into a hole at the base of a Linden tree, there I was amazed at the electric blue stars that surrounded me, I was startled to see a man’s face appear through the stars, camouflaged perfectly amidst the starry backdrop. I recognized this spirit, not as the spirit of Yarrow, but as a gatekeeper. I run into gatekeepers often in my journey work, they guard the entries to other realms. I introduced myself and told him I was here to meet the Yarrow Spirit. He told me he wanted to make a deal with me. If I would be willing to use the yarrow spirit to help him hold open a portal, he would not only introduce me to the Spirit of Yarrow, He would give me a Yarrow Healing and teach me how to see and work with the human energy field. I asked if this portal was going to cause harm and he assured me it wouldn’t. He explained to me that there was a great battle between good and evil happening here on earth that threatened to shatter the entire web of life, not only for the earthly realm but for the field of energy in which matter is encoded. A great warrior spirit was needed here on earth and he intended to lend us that courageous spirit. Sensing my hesitation, he went on to explain that despite my bias toward war, a great conflict was indeed coming and a warrior spirit is what we would desperately need. He then waved in a group of star people, warriors for me to meet. Together we talked about what it means to have a warrior spirit and they assured me that It wasn’t a lust for blood that made a warrior but the willingness to stand for the good of the earth, for love and for one’s values. I agreed to the Blue Star Man’s deal, and together we used a stalk of yarrow to draw a sun cross symbol on a mirror. At once, a cloud of stars blew in and within it I could see crowds of people pouring in, Star people made of white light were running in through this open portal in my living room. It was really like nothing I had ever seen and before I knew it I was lying down on a bed of clouds and a thousand tiny hands of light were massaging my body.

A crow flew in and placed a stalk of Yarrow at my feet as my lesson began. Yarrow’s healing message for me was to anchor my consciousness down into my body. For those of us who are in chronic disassociation, whose defenses cause them to get out of their body, we do ourselves a great disservice. When I was a child I learned how to leave my body, my father often punished us with his belt and I learned that I could easily just pop out of my body whenever I felt threatened, I did this throughout my youth and into adolescence, my first sexual experiences weren’t really experienced at all and It became a coping mechanism throughout my life. In my late teens I turned to drugs and alcohol which greatly helped me to escape but for the past 8 years I’ve been sober and embodiment has become a priority for me. Until Yarrow, pointed it out, I hadn’t really noticed that I was still living outside of myself. Yarrow showed me that I had caused a tear in my energy body which my consciousness would habitually rise up out of.

I’m not alone in this, Yarrow explained that many people today are living outside their physical bodies. It starts in early childhood as a coping skill but becomes habitual, subconscious and automatic as one ages, leading to chronic pain and disease. You’ll know these people by the zoned out, far away look in their eyes. when you tune into their energy field you’ll notice their consciousness is actually above and behind them. it twists up their field and therefore it twists up their body. you’ll often catch these people sitting in twisted, hunched over positions. This causes pain that often travels through the body, hard to pin down, hard to describe or diagnose. Yarrow can help to heal these tears in our system, returning our consciousness to its rightful place within our core, returning the energy flow to it’s natural state.

before my journey was over, Yarrow suggested a few practices to help retrain my consciousness. One exercise was simply pulling my consciousness down into my body as I focus on my breathing, pushing it lower with each breath. Yarrow then showed me the rightful place of my consciousness, what it called the ‘core star’, just above my belly button in the center of my body, from here my light can shine directly from source, my true essence can shine through every cell of my body. Yarrow told me the more you let your true essence shine, the happier and healthier you will become.