Entry #2
This summer I was treated to a reading with the Herbcrafter’s Tarot. The card drew for me was Blackberry. The reader asked what the card brought up for me. I immediately thought of my struggle with the Blackberries in my yard. How they spread and overtook garden beds. How they were difficult to remove, creating such deep and tangled root systems. She encouraged me to look at my relationship with Blackberry Roots, maybe even spending time with them in my own yard, to see what they might represent for me aside from the obvious notion of an invasive garden nuisance.
I must admit that I felt resistance in working through this concept. I didn’t want to work in the shadows, under the soil, inspecting roots. I wanted to embrace the light. It was mid-summer and I was full of creative energy and relishing the abundance of all that was thriving above ground. My resistance to dig under the soil was better kept for the dark season.
And here it is, 6 months later, the dawn of winter, the peak of the dark season, when I find myself digging into the depths of the soil, mining for what lurks in the shadows.
The Blackberry card in the Herbcrafter’s deck is representative of the Devil card, step number 15 in the hero’s journey of the Tarot. A card representative of being trapped by our own desires, addictions, feeling a lack of fulfillment. It highlights our shadow self, examining our unhealthy attachments to people and ways of being, where we force our will and outcomes, and cave to temptations. It’s a big step in personal awareness allowing an opportunity to examine and shed what no longer serves. My husband calls this a re-wiring, I think of it as an opportunity to untether, to untangle ourselves from what binds.
I have yet to go dig up blackberry roots and inspect them, although I know I should. I certainly have plenty growing around our three acre hill that should be contended with. Instead I find myself firmly planted on my couch, under a merino wool blanket. Fireplace alight. I had not intended to make way to reflection of Blackberry root. I was writing notes of things I wanted to remember from Susun Weed’s book, The New Menopausal Years. Keeping track of things I wanted to remember. Like:
Note the clipped pages.
Tincture of motherwort
Sage infusion
Nettle infusion
Oat straw
Flow
Kundalini energy
Rubbing yarrow between our hands for a vital feeling, notice where the energy goes, from my hands, to my nose (aroma) through to the back of my neck and down my spine to my to the my the meeting of my hip bones
Notice how you don’t’ know much about your own anatomy, finally order the anatomy maps you’ve been meaning to order, for muscular skeletal, and meridian and organs and mio-fascial.
Bach Flower Remedies: Walnut protection. Gift Walnuts to your lady friends on ladies night.
I notice that I am more drawn to leaves than roots, things that are imprinted by the light of the sun, over those that are left in shadow. This is interesting to note, as last January I had made a commitment to myself to pay more attention to the roots.
And then,
I began reflecting on that moment with the Blackberry card. The imagery of its roots comes to me. I see entanglement.
I see relationships that need to be unbound from the mother root. Covid kept my family close to me, in a way that we were lucky to have at the time, but also in a way that didn’t allow for the unfurling of adult relationships with my children. There is a need to cut the cord, to not hold them so tight, to realize that the intimacy between us needs to change.
My house became a cave, a prison, actually, a place to hide, where all of my focus was drawn. TIt is a beautiful place to hide. It is my “dream” house, but the fun I was having in keeping home, and herb crafting, gardening, and preserving, and cooking, has become a dread, and I have become bogged down by it. Shut in. Trapped. As is the way with dreams sometimes, like mountain tops, the climb is more fun than the destination. They look more pristine from afar.
My relationship with my partner became overly co-dependent during the quarantine times as well. So much fear existed in the unknowns of that time. I became a security blanket for my partner all the while being an outlet for his insecurities. He became the outlet for my insecurities, and was under constant criticism from me. Our energies could no longer walk side by side where we could admire and appreciate our individual contributions to our union. We were a tangled up mass of co-mingled energy forced so tightly together that the friction was combustible. It seemed as this issue would never resolve.
This summer, as I sat with my sister in law, sipping on rosie wine with rosemary sprigs, these struggles were reaching their peaks. I was too immersed in the struggles to clearly see the reflection of them within the message of that Devil card. I can see it clearly now.
My work now is to detangle those roots, allowing them to find their own pathways through the soils, from this mother root. Not severed from, just stretching apart from, to form their own rootedness. It is a hard won battle to unwind the tangled mass. My womb aches, there is grief in the letting go. An emtpiness ensues. An anger fills the space. I lash out when I wish to be compassionate. I have to soften, be less rigid. I have to find my own rhythms and find healthy ways to fill this space that was so full of others needs and energies for so long. I have known nothing else my entire adult life than this connectedness with my husband and children.
My life as Mother began at the tender young age of seventeen. I always had a penchant to care for the young, to imagine myself as a mother, even from a young age. Babysitting was the preferred job of my youth. I loved caring for other people’s homes and children, organizing their kitchens, cleaning their bathrooms, feeding the family, taking notes on how my employers kept house and assessing what I would do differently. I had firm ideas on how I would raise my family and keep my home because of it. I had an idealistic view of what home and family should be. In reality, Home and Family are a tangled mass of experiences full of individuals living and learning. Not a sit-com full of scripted conversations and magical settings as I had imagined. I need to unravel from my idealistic way of thinking even now.
It’s funny how this card made me cringe in that summertime moment, because now I’m craving Blackberry Root. I can imagine the smell of hummus, that soft decaying earth so full of living organisms all around the fibrous root system. It smells alive, with a hint of fungus. I imagine having a taste of the root, it is tannic and bitter, gritty with soil.
Blackberry Root is stubborn, a feisty thing to release from the soil. Its mother root can run deep, becoming rigid, creating woody connections with its fibrous offspring. Each of those roots sends up new shoots from the soil, gasping for air, craving their own sunlight. The stabilizing mother root keeps her place all the while. Getting stronger, longer and more rooted as time goes on. She may stop sending out more shoots and roots, but she provides structure and support to the system. When ingested the Blackberry Root helps us to let go. Flushing our systems, soothing our brittleness, making us pliable once again.
This reflection is allowing me to rethink sticky moments of entanglement, shedding new light on them, and blasting them with new higher frequency, in hopes that the after effects are transformed into sweet confections. Like blackberry pie, or jam, that with time, these rooted entanglements can sprout forth, creating new life in the form of leaf, blossom, and berry, alchemized with a pinch of sugar, a dash of cinnamnon, topped with a sugary crumb into something fortifyng and decadent, comforting. I think I can bring this reality to light, In doing so I can change the feeling around the people and events that haven’t gone the way I would have liked. This is a bit like going back in time to heal the situation and give it light.
So this is what I’m going to do, I am going to cast light on these entanglements, let them unravel, relinquish control, and move forward, clean and free from the tangled mass it had all become. I will make a Blackberry pie. As I prepare my yard for spring I’ll find a tangled mass of blackberry roots. I’ll taste the strong mother, appreciating the gifts she gives my body. And then I will burn the goddamn thing as a ritual to bring this newfound clarity into being.
And as always, to make it so, to cement it into being: So Mote It Be.
Here’s a reflection of the card found on a blog entitled Parting the Mist and The picture is from thar site. The deck is written by Latisha Guthrie and Illustrates by Joanna Powell. It is an exquisite take on herbs as the arcana.
In Donata's Kitchen 
Leave a comment