Spiritual Herbs Artemesia, Yarrow, Aloe

Artemisia

What makes a life herb desirable has to be the same for a great ceramic or painting, color, odor, form, universality,  good and the cure it brings. To abstract these in the botanese of materia medica is impossible. Take artemisia, the generic name, while species have difference, they still share the traits. Only call it mugwort as a convenience. So first the blue grey color, then the scent of thujone, then the delicate fernlike stems and leaves, then the fact that it is everywhere, along every highway, in every fence row, and finally the cure.

The most dramatic cure was when  glass artist Jim Bowman presented one day at the door on Avenue D with his knee swollen all out of form. He said he'd been to an urgent care and it was in its third day. He was just visiting, not seeking a cure, but I went out in the alley, since it is everywhere, cut a bundle and cooked it in water till it was real strong. Then we sat him down and put the leaves on the knee covered by towels over and under and for the next hours poured the water over and over the knee. Maybe he drank some of it too, I forget. So after that he took the rest home and did it some more. It was the next day maybe, or the day after when he showed up and the swelling was completely gone.

I have done this operation since with less dramatic occasions. Nowadays tennis players have so many swollen knees, but they all ice. This is not very effective. Somebody try artemisia on a tennis player and get back to us. In that time I decided to find out why this worked and researched it. The results were published, or not, in Native Texans, but there is a physical principle. As a birthday present this year, having breakfast on the Rim, artemisia was growing everywhere. A few little sprouts stuck to wet paper towel we dropped and came back into town. These were potted up, which coincided with the monsoon rains all week. Now it seems the shoots have already rooted. Great present!

Yarrow

With milfoil the case is more complicated, it being such an ancient herb of use in function. Not that the I Ching is all that specific, and it's like reading Chuang Tzu, but no divination is useful in itself, despite the huge trade in fortune telling. It's harmful to know the future except in the case where it is a prediction of hope or deliverance from trouble such as Isaiah gave in the siege of Hezekiah by Sennacherib, something about the king will hear some news, which he did. He heard the angel killed a hundred eight five thousand Assyrians that night and Sennacherib was on his way home to Niveveh:. So Byron said:

the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,

Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

So it helps to have deliverance predicted. You will be a cured of cancer. So that aside, and maybe to revisit, to apply the color, odor, form, universality, good, the color is an exquisite yellow green, the odor is astringent and vaguely menthol, the form is a thousand leaves, milfoil, more finely divided ferns, the universality is everywhere (that sound redundant?). I put some once along a Creek decades ago and it flourished with the horsetail reeds. I took some from Texas and put it in a Sonoran desert border. It did good, but the seeds took wing and it is in other borders now. It is all over the Mogollon Rim. One is in the garden. Welcome, my friend! As to the good, I used to have weak lungs subject to bronchitis and chest colds. I took to yarrow teas, drinking and inhaling the aromas. It made me its friend. I like a friend with whom I can take a walk. There is again more to this. Is that in Native Texans too? I don't remember.

Aloe
I came to Phoenix for the aloe, saw pictures of the Boyce Thompson Arboretum outside Globe where they were all weather, knew in that instant I had to have aloes year round.

One time on the MoPac outside Austin a cyclist went down, helmet all dented, shirt ripped off, skin like a red rug. I approached him for the time,asked, how's it goin, but he wanted to go home. He bled all over the front seat. When we got to his house his wife burst into tears.

It must be the influence of the plants but I was feeling good that day so suggested he get in the bathtub! A little weird come to think of it.

So his wife and I washed off the gravel and dirt from the road burn and he took a percocet and lay down all red. My wife had gone to cut some aloes and brought a pile which I cut and put on the clean wounds. They should have been antiseptic and aloes are not proper treatment either, but we are in the field here, imagine third world, where the doc's hand is his MRI, or in the 19th century where maybe we put a leech on it, but anyway the guy fell asleep! All the shock wore off. His wife relaxed. The aloe sealed the wounds and he woke up in half an hour and called all his friends who then called the para medics who came in the midst of what was by then one cookin' party when we eased out and went on. Aloe! It's like a French greeting.

Color, odor, form, universality, good. Green of a certain sort is the loveliest color. Whether that's the yellow green of milfoil or the slight blue green of aloe is a nice question. With its yellow flowers though we're in the presence of majesty. The spikes don't smell, but the mucilage does, just slightly astringent. The spikes can get so large you can't pick them up, three feet and fat, and they will nick. When my friend Blessing was so sick after her MRI's and brain operations that could not cure the infection we put aloe on her wounds every day and she liked to eat it. It's not everywhere though, except you can take it with you. Dried aloe could be a new industry in the outback. Or go to the health food store and drink it, or smooth it on. Have you smoked it? Please call about that. As to the good hardly enough can be said. We have giant aloes in big clay pots, use one each Christmas as a Tree.

Yesterday I put a coffee mug in the microwave but it had some oil on the inside of the handle. When I took it out the inside of my middle finger felt funny, then began to burn. I iced it, but it really began to burn. Then three big white blisters appeared. Still burning I did what I'd not done in years, went out back and cut some aloe, macerated it in the skin and taped it on the finger. It stopped hurting in half an hour and never did again, but it looked like it did.

I realize aloe should be in the top of this list. I've surrounded my house with it, front, back and sides. This is the yellow flowered one, but I've got reds. Sally Parsons used to give her giant red aloes of Canyon Lake coffee grounds.