Mercury and Jupiter’s Wisdom — 4 Simple Ways to Heal Ourselves

Hey everyone. This is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology [https://nightlightastrology.com/].

Today, in light of Mercury trining Jupiter in the sign of Cancer, we are going to talk about some ways that you can work to heal trauma, or use this energy or transit to help you heal with anything that you're dealing with.

In order to do that, I'm bringing my wife Ashley onto the show today, who is a clinical herbalist. She's going to tell you about some simple ways that you can use plants to aid in the process of healing in an especially powerful window right now that's available to us for that kind of work.

It's been a while since Ashley has been on the show. A lot of you know her because she's been on the show over many years. You know many times, but it's been a little bit since. It's been a minute since she's been on. So it'll be nice to introduce some of you to her work today as well.

I'll tell you also at the end of the program about her herbal apprenticeship, which is starting again next month. So that will be what we do today, but hopefully some very astrology, some astrological insight, paired with some really practical and embodied wisdom that can be utilized during this astrological window for healing.

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As we're heading into April, my monthly webinar for the month of April. Later this month, I'm going to be giving a talk on the philosophical roots of the sun and its symbolism in astrology. And then we're going to show you, once you understand that deep philosophical background of the sun, how and why it pairs with every single other planet in aspect. That is a really deep way to get to know the planets. I've really been enjoying this series.

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Pretty soon, we'll be promoting the Year One program, which starts again in June. So stay tuned for that, but that's it for today.

I'm gonna pop the chart open. And if you haven't gotten to know the new software program I'm using at Nightlight, I've been talking about it a lot on the channel recently, but you will see that this is what the program looks like. And I'm going to just quickly highlight for you the transit that we're looking at today, and I'm going to bring Ashley on.

Mercury is joining in a trine with Jupiter. Actually talked about this to start the week. It's a very powerful transit. Mercury's trine with Jupiter has reception. Mercury's just turned direct. Jupiter's just turned direct. Jupiter is exalted in Cancer. This is a very nourishing and healing combination of planets to pair together, especially at the time of a Venus Pluto square, which can also bring up often more vulnerable stuff for us in our relationships and elsewhere.

So we're looking at the perfection of that transit today. And I thought it would be a really good idea to bring Ashley on because she has so much experience in utilizing astrological transits like these to pair with plant wisdom.

So anyway, on that note, welcome back, sweetheart.

Ashley Elenbaas
Hi, glad to be here.

Adam Elenbaas
Yeah, for those of you who don't know Ashley, she is a clinical herbalist who has a master's degree in clinical herbal medicine, has been teaching herbs, and we've been teaching together for a long time. We had a yoga studio for almost a decade in DC, where we ran classes, yoga classes. Ashley is also a great yoga teacher. We taught and trained yoga teachers, and Ashley's been training herbalists through her apprenticeship programs for, I don't know, at least a decade. So anyway, it's really good to have you here again.

Ashley Elenbaas
Well, thanks for having me back. Yeah, I have a few plants I'm really excited to share that I think are really nice matches for the conversation of trauma repair, and they're timely too. So thanks for having me on again.

Adam Elenbaas
Of course. I think one of the reasons then we're going to get into Ashley. We're going to pick Ashley's brain and get some wisdom from Ashley on some plants that we can use intelligently right now with this transit, and not just right now. It's a good time to start using them. But the benefits can last far beyond this transit. Astrological transits like these are often good times to start using something or to introduce yourself to something with the power for that positivity to last.

So that's why we're doing this right now. Because when we have Mercury in Pisces and it's trine Jupiter in Cancer, the cosmic apothecary is open. It's open for business. And Mercury, this combination, in a flowing trine, a watery trine may even bring us back a little bit to the fall of 2025 where we had those grand water trines over and over and over again.

This trine is reflective of those trines, but it's coming from a very integrated place. Mercury caught Jupiter in forward motion while Jupiter was retrograde, caught Jupiter a second time in retrograde motion as Jupiter was turning direct, and is now catching Jupiter in forward direction again. After Mercury's completed its retrograde, after Jupiter has turned direct, there's reception between the two planets. Jupiter is exalted in the mothering, nurturing sign of Cancer.

So the idea that we've been working on something, that we've been looking at things and carefully trying to recalibrate our mind, our bodies, our emotional health, that there is a healing process going on, is very well indicated by these watery planets going through such a process together. The wisdom of Jupiter in Cancer that's able to be brought in right now from Mercury is like, here's some of the best nurturing, mothering, self-care, healing advice you could get from the planets. But it does take a little work on our part and a willingness to be receptive and, you know, and also seek out help. All we really have to do with the planets is ask for help, and they tend to just pour it out.

On that note, the thought that we had today was that this would be, first of all, being transparent. I've been meaning to have Ashley come on because I want to support her upcoming herbal apprenticeship program. But also when to do that, when we have something truly meaningful to talk about, and that's, I think this is a really good time for that.

I want to say one more thing, and then I'm going to hand it over to Ashley, and that is that neither of us are telling anybody that, oh, yeah, you know, the simple way to heal trauma is to take this plant, right? It's like, you know, it takes a village to heal a wound. It takes people in our network of support, but along the path of healing, there are allies in all corners of nature. And I think that plants are maybe one of the most dramatically underappreciated forms of allies that we have.

In Minneapolis St. Paul this winter, Ashley, you teamed up with a group of herbalists to provide herbal relief packages to families who'd been hiding out in their houses, really super afraid, like nervous systems traumatized from some of the ice presence here in the Twin Cities. Maybe you could talk a little bit about that and your background with healing, working with people who have trauma, the holistic approach you would take, and then we can get into the plants.

Ashley Elenbaas
Sure. Yeah, that was a really intense moment where I think a lot of us herbalists got to really dig into our toolbox and find the plants that we thought would be most supportive for families. And you know, actually, two of the plants I'm going to be talking about today were our largest allies, both using them as sprays and as an aromatic, because our nervous system, the way that our bodies are wired, is when we smell things, it affects our limbic branch of our nervous system, and then that can create a parasympathetic nervous system relaxant response. So it can be really healing just to smell things.

We all know when we walk into a house and it has that familiar smell that can just sort of become like, oh home, or like baking bread or apple pie. The same thing is true for a lot of aromatics from plants. We get this instant hit of relaxation.

So those are that's kind of what we did in Minneapolis, is we created these care kits that had aromatic sprays that people could use in their homes since they were sheltering in place, and then also teas they could drink, glycerins and tinctures they could take internally to help their nervous systems recalibrate. And like Adam was saying, it's not that these will fix everything, but they're just like a gentle nudge to our internal systems and to our spirits to just say you're not alone, you're supported, and we can help you move back into a place of regulation.

Adam Elenbaas
It seems counterintuitive, because anyone who's gone through major trauma knows that it's not a simple thing to fix. However, simple, gentle things have a lot more power to heal than we also tend to think they do. In other words, it's the small ways that we care for the soul every day, the gentle, soothing, little things that we do that have a big effect, especially when they're given and administered with care, genuine care.

So anyway, we have today for you, given this Mercury Jupiter trine, given everything that you might be dealing with over the past couple of months, major transits this year, we just wanted to provide everyone with four simple plants that you could work with, that you could start including in your life, that are very safe to use. Anyone can use. So Ashley's going to tell you about what those are, and I'm just going to ask questions like a fool.

Ashley Elenbaas
Well, I've actually dosed you with all of these. So these should all be familiar allies. At some point I've squirted them in your mouth or in your face.

So ongoing joke in our home, how bitter can I look? How bitter of an herb can I get Adam to take? You're dealing with something, and now she's like, I know it's gonna be something bitter.

Okay, so I wanted to start this conversation by sharing something that I learned today in our local Al Anon group. And as many of you know, Adam and I both attend Al Anon, which is a support group for families of alcoholics. And today, one of the participants shared that he's a therapist, and he was saying some of the research is showing that the best thing we can do in trauma, when there's been an acute traumatic situation, is instead of letting the time between, like most of the bad habits after a traumatic situation happen within the first few days afterward, and the research is showing that the best thing we can do in that short period after a traumatic event is to create an arc narrative. So that is a story, a story that bridges the traumatic event with something meaningful and something that gives us perspective.

And I loved that. And I was like, That makes so much sense. I think that's a lot of the work that I do with plants and yoga, and that Adam does with the planets. Is okay, these things happened. What is the meaning, what is the story behind it?

So what I'm going to do with all of these plants is give you a little bit of a narrative story, and then, as you're thinking about maybe what is the healing journey you're on, what story might fit the best with what you're putting together for yourself, that you can use this plant ally to help you create that bridge, and every time you take a sip of tea or spray this herb on your face, that you'll be reminded of that healing story and that arc.

So that's a little background of where we're going right now. We're going to start with the first plant, which is Rose. And this is a nice one, because many of us are familiar with it. It's pretty easy to find medicinally, and I want to tell you the healing story of Rose. So the arc of this story is about vulnerability and protection. And this is a narrative story we hear a lot, which is, I was hurt. I was betrayed. Someone broke my trust. I've lost faith. And that can make you feel like you want to shut down, that you don't ever want to open yourself up to love again, or to relationships or to risk.

But what the rose tells us is that we don't have to shut down. We can continue to bloom and open and to share our unique fragrance, but with clearer boundaries, with greater protection. And these are the thorns. And this iconography has been seen in many religious traditions. The rose is very prominent in Catholicism, in Egyptian medicine, throughout the pagan traditions in Europe, as this very holy, sacred plant that shows us that we can have an open heart with safe boundaries.

And Rose is a really nice one for the heart too, because it has all of these flavonoids and antioxidant compounds that are cardio protective. So the research actually shows us that these pigments found in the rose help to repair inflammation and damage caused by inflammation in the heart, in the arteries and even in the veins and in the capillaries and vessels. So if we've had an injured heart, if we've had a heated heart, you know, if we've gotten angry and our passions have flared and have hurt us in some way, the cooling, calming and anti-inflammatory action of Rose can be a nice salve for that type of circumstance we might have found ourselves in.

And then the roses or the thorns then can also be a reminder of let's be smart next time, you know, let's learn from our mistakes and approach things still with openness, but also with a little bit more attention to detail. And I think that that's a great gift of Rose.

Now, how we can use rose. This is a nice plant because there's a lot of options. One is you can use it as a spray. And I'm just going to show you, this is a rose water spray. Hydrosols can be found from many different brands. This one is Heritage Store, and Rose is often used in a lot of skincare products, because it's slightly astringent, it's toning, it's clarifying for the skin. And not only are you going to get that positive effect on the skin itself, but also the aroma and the aromatherapy is calming, soothing and relaxing.

Also in herbal medicine, we can drink it internally as a tea, and you can use organic rose petals. This one, I would be very picky about it being organic, because a lot of roses in commerce are sprayed. So if you can find organic rose petals, my favorite way of brewing it is as a cold infusion. The reason for that is the cold water won't pull out as many of the really astringent tannins, which most of us don't like the feeling of that on our tongue. So if you take two tablespoons of dried rose petals in a quart of cold water and let it sit in that water overnight, strain it the next day and drink it, you'll be amazed at how refreshing and floral this water is and how cooling and calming it feels on the heart and on your spirit.

Margi Flint, who was one of my herb teachers, she spoke about using rose petals in baths. And for children who have experienced trauma, using white rose petals, and those are the most pure vibration of rose. And so if you give your child who's experienced some traumatic event a bath in those white rose petals, it's said to help to restore that wholeness, and to help bring back the purity that might have been maybe disturbed in some way. And then, if the incident was more maybe having to do with the sexual organs or sexual trauma, then red rose petals could be used in the bath for an adult.

So I thought that was a really nice thing, too. And there's nothing more luxurious than taking a bath with rose petals floating in the water.

And then the last way you can take it. This is a flower essence that I made from my garden last summer with some of my students. But you could also buy this commercially. I know Bach Flower Remedies and other companies sell rose flower essence, and you can just take three drops on your tongue. This is safe for all ages. Anyone can use it, even if you're on medications. It's a very safe and usually very well tolerated plant.

Adam Elenbaas
As you guys can tell, I'm like my wife's a Cancer rising, double Taurus. It's all earth and sweetness. That's why I fell in love with you. You're wonderful. Should we go to number two?

Ashley Elenbaas
Yeah, let's do it. So this one might, our family likes to joke and call it chamamomile because it's fun to try to say it out loud. You know, I almost got him to do it. It's just a fun one to say out loud, but it's chamomile for most of us.

And chamomile has a really nice healing arc story. Many people might not know this, but when chamomile is first coming up in the spring, when it's just the little green leaves, it will grow stronger if you trample it. And this is, I think, a really nice story for people who've maybe been walked on or taken advantage of in some way. And so the healing story goes that, you know, in the early spring, when they're super tender, if you were to trample on them, your yield will be even greater come early summer.

And so this is a practice my girls and I do in the garden. When the chamomile starts to come up, I have them put on their rain boots, and we trample it, and we just stomp on it, and we know that we're helping to make it grow stronger. And the last few harvests have been prolific. We've had some really nice, big blossoms and blooms.

Adam Elenbaas
I'm like, are you sure? Are you sure you guys stomp on it? It always feels like mean to me.

Ashley Elenbaas
Yeah, yeah, but it makes it more resilient. And I'm not, you know, I'm not saying that that's what you have to do to each other. Like, I'm not saying, like, let's stomp on each other. But I'm saying if you have been stomped on, then feeling that ability to grow against that pressure and to grow and be even brighter and bolder, and have a stronger medicine inside of you despite that challenge, is the medicine of chamomile. And isn't that a beautiful story?

The other thing that you can use chamomile for is to heal sick plants. So it's called the physician of the plants. So you can brew chamomile tea or use chamomile tea that you've already brewed and do a second brew so it'll be weaker. And then any plants that you have that are sick or ailing or soil that's become just a little bit old and degraded, you can pour the chamomile tea on those plants and it will revive them. And we've done that in our garden and with some of our potted plants. Partly that's because it has some volatile oils which kill off nematodes and other bad guys that can live in the soil and harm the plant roots. And then also because this plant, I think, has a very mothering energy.

Its Latin name is Matricaria chamomilla, and Matricaria stands for Mater or mother, and Caria, which is to hold or to carry. So it's the herb that carries the mother or that holds the mother. And sometimes us mothers need more mothering. We maybe need more care ourselves. And I often recommend this as an herb for mothers who are just kind of wiped out from carrying a lot of responsibility. Yeah, so that's a really nice one.

And the best way, I think, to use chamomile is as a tea. This is some chamomile that was donated to us from a grower in Texas for our mutual aid kits. And so I'm going to be putting that into tea bags. But it's really nice just to take a teaspoon of the raw herb, or to just use tea bags from a box, and use two tea bags, because you want to get that medicinal action in your body. And it's a nervous system relaxant. It helps to relax the gut, and it also helps to create more ease in the flow of your energy through the day.

Adam Elenbaas
So that's, I feel like one of the gifts of chamomile as a mother is like, you know, this is just my personal experience with chamomile, so I don't know if this will resonate with you or not, sweetheart, but like, whenever I drink chamomile, there's this kind of, this way that I feel like this is supposed, like, if I'm having anxiety, for example, and it's evening, and I know I've got to sleep soon, you know, like I've had chamomile in the past, I'll have maybe a cup of chamomile, and immediately I'll be like, this isn't calming me. An hour later, I'll be completely chilled out, and I won't have noticed it, right? But then at some point I do, and I'm always like, well, I'm thinking about this now kind of jokingly around the mother image. I'm like, Well, no, Mom's gonna make you feel good and then not remind you she made you feel good. So like, I feel good. I don't recognize it, I don't appreciate it. And then, like an hour, I get like the tiniest little hint of a guilt trip from chamomile. I always say, I think that's funny, given that it's kind of a mom herb.

Ashley Elenbaas
It is, yeah, and that's true, it does sometimes take a little bit of time to onset. So if you're using it for sleep, drinking about an hour, not 30 minutes, but like a full hour or so before you go to bed.

Adam Elenbaas
One thing in general, that we're not like, we're so instant fix oriented that a lot of us are not patient enough for the effects of herbal allies, because they're subtle, and they change our consciousness subtly and often over a little period of time. And you can, like, Ashley's really good at this. She'll give me something, and I'll be like, Man, I didn't do anything. And then, like, two hours later, I'm like, in a totally different space, and she notices it, but I don't, because sometimes I'm just, like, too impatient. But I've learned over time to be more patient and to actually notice these things.

Ashley Elenbaas
Yeah. I mean, that's why being an herbalist is kind of like being a bit of a mad scientist. And, you know, I'm constantly giving people things, but I won't know if they worked unless I check in. So part of my job as the detective is to give the medicine and then, yeah, take notes.

Let's go back to the word chamomile for a second, because I just noticed something I've never noticed before, is that the word mom isn't right in the middle. It's being hugged by the CHA and the elay, so who knew?

Adam Elenbaas
By the CHA and the elay, yeah.

Ashley Elenbaas
All right, now we can go on. All right, our next herb is Sage.

And sage is maybe an unlikely one you might think of for trauma. But when I was thinking about story arcs, I feel like what I love about sage is that it helps us break down old gunk. It's a really nice, very gentle detoxifying herb. If you've ever baked or, you know, if you cook meat, sage is often something that we use to cook very fatty meats like pork and duck and things like that, because the volatile oils in the sage actually start to break down those fats in the process of it cooking with these oils, and then that helps that fat be more easily broken down and moved through our body.

And I feel like sage also does that. That's part of its story arc in its healing, is it helps us break down things that are too big. You know, sometimes we have an experience where we're like, I don't even know where to start with that, and then it's kind of easy to just kind of compartmentalize it and be like, I'm going to set you over there for about 10 years, then we'll get back to you.

But what sage does is sage has these big, soft, feathery leaves, these fuzzy leaves, and it just says, No, honey, you can do it now. You can handle it now.

Sage has also been used in traditional medicines as a smudging herb or a space clearing herb, both as a burning plant, but also to use to wash floors with. So mint and sage were often used in, they would brew a tea in Europe, and then they would put their mop in there, and then mop the floors. And it's a disinfectant. And disinfectant of what, well, you know, microbes and dirt and things like that, but also of energies. It's also just disinfectant of stagnant energy that can get stuck.

So I think sage, for this transit, thinking of Venus. Venus rules most of our mint family and our salvia plants, because of its bright green, jovial, aromatic medicines, that it'd be a really good one to bring into your cooking, to bring into your house cleaning this spring, and to use it to help you tackle things that seem a little bit daunting.

And I was just Adam and I were talking about this yesterday, how during one of his meditation sessions, someone was like, now that I've been meditating, I have this urge to clean, like I'm getting still, and this big task of cleaning my bedroom finally has become manageable. And I feel like meditation does that for us, and you could pair that insight along with an herb. So maybe make a little bit of sage tea, or burn a little bit of sage, put some sage essential oil in a little spray bottle and spray it. And that can also just start to break things down. So it's easier for you to move them through your system.

I will say with sage, it is contraindicated if you are pregnant or breastfeeding, because it's very strong in volatile oils. We don't want to use, we don't want to disrupt the baby or dry up breast milk if you're breastfeeding. So those are some contraindications.

Adam Elenbaas
Yeah, the thing that strikes me about sage that's really interesting is in almost all of the, well, no, in all of the temples. I can't think of one that I didn't go to, where some form of purifying sage wasn't being burned. Now, there's different kinds, and obviously incense is a big, but when I'm talking about India, there's just something about cleaning and clearing spaces. And what I thought was really interesting was the amount of sage when I was in the Amazon too. Like every holy place on the planet seems to involve sage, doesn't it?

Ashley Elenbaas
Yeah, and sweat lodges. It was used to clear the space before they went into the sweat lodge. So there's, yeah.

Adam Elenbaas
Even in, like, even in Scandinavian cultures, the use of it around saunas and a sauna is a kind of a Scandinavian version of a sweat lodge, in a way. The purification, the idea that some sense aid in physical, mental, spiritual purification is really, really old. And, you know, it's sort of it sort of blows my mind that we don't have more ritual, obviously, plants, but ritual with things like plants, the elements of the earth, and ritual meaningfully put together around trauma. And, you know, it's just, it's just lacking, isn't it? You know, there's something we think of. And I don't mean any offense to Western allopathic medicine, because there's so much benefit to and so many people who watch this are nurses and doctors. And so there's no, I don't mean no offense by this, but there's something. There's a difference between clean and sterile, yes. And I don't mean any offense by that, because there's a great need for instruments to be sterilized. But when you go into a healing space with a ritual, and there's a feeling of cleansing, it's like very different from the medicinal spaces in our culture right now, our society right now, that are sterile. And I'm not saying one is better than the other, but they are very different, aren't they?

Ashley Elenbaas
Yeah, and I think there's something also about the participatory nature of the smoke and the sage. You know, you walk into a sterile room, and it's been done by unseen hands. But when you walk into a space, you're being cleansed. You know, the plant is doing the work real time, and you're participating in that cleansing action of the space. And I think that does have a very different feel, too.

Adam Elenbaas
One simple thing in India that they do is they ring a doorbell, basically, when they enter a temple. In a lot of temples, there's a doorbell, you ring, and it's like, here I am with my trauma, with my baggage. I'm a spirit soul, and then there's smoke wafting, and there's flowers on the altar, and there's all, it's like, you're being held by the witnessing of all of these elements and all of these rituals. And I really feel that life with the plants feels like that to me. It feels like there are scent, because I think of plants as sentient spiritual teachers ever since ayahuasca and entheogens in general. And Ashley thinks about it that way too. So both of us are like, when you bring these plants into your life, you're also just like the planets become like characters that you can actually relate with. That's really what they're there. We live in an animistic universe, you know. So anyway, I'm waxing on

Ashley Elenbaas
and on. Let's hear about rue.

Adam Elenbaas
Well, I just want to say one thing to that point, which is, this is why the study of plants and planets takes so many cycles. Because we have to revisit these planetary aspects again and again to get more kind of depth and breadth of understanding. And the same thing with plants, it's like, we can't just use chamomile once and be like, Okay, now we understand it. We have to revisit it. We have to revisit these squares. And every time we understand them more. And for me, as a gardener, every year I grow these plants, I get deeper and deeper into befriending them and understanding their needs and likes.

Adam Elenbaas
And I'll add to this my own thought. I think that's because the context is, first of all, context is the most basic evidence we need that we don't live in a machine. We live in a living field. We live in a forest called Reality, right? And it's a living ecosystem. There's no part it has behaviors that can be described in mechanistic ways, but its heart is living.

And I feel like the reason that we can't purely understand the planets in a vacuum, and everybody learns better over time, is because you get to know Venus through all of her retrograde cycles. Every retrograde cycle, you're like, oh, and you deepen a relationship with a symbol, with a planet. And the same is true for chamomile, or for rue, or for any of these things. Every context you work with it within is a different way of getting to know it. And there's this intimacy that develops. And really that intimacy is, I think that that's why I do that. I mean that is what I believe is of the most value of this work in general. It's not here's all this really important information about what's going to happen to you. It's here's this invitation to participate in a magical

Ashley Elenbaas
Cosmos again. Yeah, yeah. And here are some stories that have been told for 1000s of years that are part of your story too, yes. And then we can start to bridge those in as well. And I, yeah, it's such a, there's such great wisdom in these teachings.

So I'll talk a little bit about rue, because this is a very ancient plant as well. One of my favorite herbalists who used rue a lot was Hildegard von Bingen. And she was a Christian mystic. I think it was in the 1100s?

Adam Elenbaas
Is that right? I can't remember off top my head, but yes.

Ashley Elenbaas
But it was, you know, back many, many hundreds of years ago. And she was a mystic, and would hear the songs of the plants, and she conducted all these beautiful pieces of music that you can still listen to today. But she used rue, this plant Ruta graveolens, to restore sight.

And I'll tell you a story. In our garden back in Maryland, we had a friend who did photography for us. And I like to do this with people. So if you come to my garden, be prepared for this type of situation where I said, put this in your mouth, keep it here for a few minutes, and then tell me what you notice.

So I did this with this photographer. So she's like, you know, posing, and she's taking photos, and she's got the rue on her tongue. And I said, What do you notice that's different? She goes, this is really weird, but all the colors are brighter, and my vision is sharper, and I'm getting all these ideas for better shots I can take. And I was like, Yes, that's what this plant is for.

And so it restores vision and clarifies vision and brings things back to life. And it was called, one of its nicknames, is the herb of grace. And it was used also with holy water. So in ancient temples in Greece and Italy, they would take sprigs of rue and dip it in the holy water, and then they would use that to purify. There's that purification again, the parishioners in these temples, because it was said to bestow grace, the grace of God or spirit, upon those who were touched by this herb.

I will say that this plant is a very strong one, and it's not readily available in commerce. So here is my recommendation. If you're feeling attracted to this one, and the story arc for this plant for you would be, you've lost your vision. You're feeling like your vision is cloudy. You had a pathway in your mind and insight, and then you lost it. So if you're feeling like you need help refocusing and finding your vision again, then you can work with this herb.

And the safest way to work with this is as a homeopathic remedy. And for those of you who are familiar with homeopathy, it's these tiny little sugar balls that they infuse with a very, very, very dilute, energetic dosage of the plant, and it contains basically no chemical compounds, but the energetic imprint. And I'll tell you, it does work pretty amazingly. And so this one you could take with any medication. Children can take it, although they probably don't need their vision restored, but it's a very, very safe way to take rue.

Now, if you're an herbalist, or you're very comfortable with this plant, you can make a tincture. And this is one that I made from our garden. This is a one to five, so it's a more dilute tincture, and you would work with it with drop doses. So at a one to five ratio, that's one gram per five milliliters. You would just take one to two drops on your tongue and then let it, it's got a very strong taste, and it will just, you'll feel it move through you.

You can also take a sprig of the leaf, just a tiny little, you know, like a pea size amount of the leaf, and set that on your tongue of the fresh plant, and let the aromatics move through you and just see how you feel.

Adam Elenbaas
Yeah, rue is a powerful one. Yeah, I feel like rue is very protective as well.

Ashley Elenbaas
Yeah. And I should have mentioned that, yeah, in Italy and in Greece, they often grow rue outside of their front doors for protection. Just like in India they grow tulsi to protect and to bring beneficent spirits into the home.

My grandmother, who amazingly is 95 and still alive, she lives just 15 minutes away. She has this huge rue plant by her back door. And rue is not supposed to live in Minnesota. Like it's a Mediterranean herb, but because my grandmother is magical, it's like a five or six year old rue plant that every year I get to go and harvest some and make some medicines. But it is a powerful protector, and when you're in its presence, there's nothing like it. It's got a kind of a ghostly blue sheen to it. It's very unlike any other plant that grows.

Adam Elenbaas
Yeah, the fact that our wedding, wasn't it rue and tobacco that we had on our altar? We did, yeah, yeah, I remember that. That is so cool.

Anyway, it's got me, it's like, got my wheels turning because we have this retreat coming up. I mentioned at the beginning, Ashley is going to be on the retreat, and some of what we're doing to deepen our connection to this divinatory nature of astrology, the divining part of us that has to awaken more to really go further with astrology, especially if we're going to practice for other people, we'll be talking a lot about that on the astrological side of things. But Ashley is going to be there teaching us some herbal medicine as well, which will be really, really fun, and leading us in yoga every day too.

So anyway, before we go, I want to tell you more about how you can get in touch with Ashley. And then I want to let her tell you about her herbal program. First and foremost, you can find her weekly content on YouTube at Sky House Herbs. So if you like her jam, like this is my vibe, I need another witch in my life, green witch in my life, you know, then check out Ashley's work at Sky House Herbs. A lot of really thoughtful content that's already there on a million different plants for a million different reasons. So check that out.

Instagram, you can follow Ashley at Sky House Herbs. And then the website, if you'd like to sign up for her apprenticeship, which she will tell you about next, is SkyHouseHerbs.com.

And there's also local garden gatherings. We have a community herbal medicine garden in our backyard. It's awesome. And Ashley hosts free or donation-based meetups throughout the summer. So if you're in Minneapolis, St. Paul, you can also join for any of those. You guys do all sorts of crazy things, making art and tasting plants and harvesting medicines. And I never know what's going on. There's always a cookie tray out when the women come over, so I just steal the cookies and leave. But I'm kidding.

Tell us about your herbal apprenticeship.

Ashley Elenbaas
So the herbal apprenticeship, it's a foundations course, and it's designed for people that are either brand new to herbalism, or they have some background, but they want to understand how to identify plants, how to make medicines, and how to apply them to different ailments, for friends and for family.

It is a 12-month course. It starts on April 17. That's the last day of registration. Right now we're running our early bird discount, which ends on March 15. I think this is going to air before that, so you can grab that $200 discount before March 15.

We also offer need-based tuition. So if you are just like Adam's programs, if you can't, you know if the amounts that we have set just you can't fit in your budget, no worries. Just fill out the application and see what you're eligible for. We have two different tiers of need-based tuition options.

But one of the things that I think people love the most about the course is that every module, there's two plants that we work with and we focus on, and that you will be taking into your body. Yeah, the plant diets. So we learn by comparing and contrasting two similar herbs, more about their unique qualities and how they can be blended and used together. And so we do that for all 11 modules. So you end up learning 22 herbs really, really well.

And in my opinion, a good herbalist knows a few herbs really, really well, rather than 1000s of herbs just a little bit. So that's what I really focus on, is like, let's get to know these 22 herbs really well, so that you can use them in multiple different types of situations.

Adam Elenbaas
And that's the same reason. Like it's the same Ashley and I are cut from the same cloth. This is why my first year program, we go back to the roots of Hellenistic astrology. We plug in the outer planets later. I'm same way. It's like, do few things and do them well as an astrologer, it'll last you a lifetime. Whereas a lot of the times, if you learn too many things too quickly and you don't have deep insight and application, what good is it? Right?

But Ashley's approach has been, I mean, she's been a part of the American Herbalist Guild on the board in the past, and has been teaching people through apprenticeship programs in herbal medicine since 2011 when we opened our yoga studio together.

I would want to say too, that if you are like, you know, oh, I want to go further. She also has a Year Two program. So she has a first and second year program that you could start with Year One.

But the other thing is that if you're into astrology and you start learning plants, you're going to have a somatic, embodied way of adding something to what you offer other people. And also, if you're someone who does nothing more than practice astrology for yourself, you're going to have herbal allies that you're going to be able to pair with transits.

There's a reason that we have today's talk happening as Mercury and Jupiter are combining in a trine. And the reason for that is that this is exactly the kind of wisdom, women's wisdom, the body's wisdom, the Earth's wisdom, that these two planets represent. So if you liked this stream today, that's what you're going to get when you visit Ashley's channel, or Ashley's work in general.

Thank you so much for being here sweetheart. Thank you so much.

Ashley Elenbaas
Thanks for having me, and just wishing you all a wonderful Venus transit, and that these plants will be supportive for you.

Adam Elenbaas
All right, we'll see you all next time. Take it easy, everyone. Bye.