Today, we’re going to take a look at Jupiter’s upcoming entrance into the sign of Cancer. This is the place of Jupiter’s exaltation — a sign that connects Jupiter intimately to the Goddess. We’ll explore why that is, and I’ll also be joined by my wife and clinical herbalist, Ashley, to share several ways you can begin working with this Goddess energy, including some plant remedies that support and complement this work.
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Transcript
Hey everyone. This is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology [https://nightlightastrology.com/]. Today we are going to take a look at the upcoming entrance of Jupiter into the sign of cancer.
This is the place of Jupiter's exaltation, and a place that connects Jupiter very intimately to the Goddess. We're going to talk about why that is, and I'll also be joined by my wife and clinical herbalist Ashley to talk about several ways that you can start working with this Goddess energy, along with some plant remedies that you can include in that work with the Goddess energy.
So this is going to be a really fun episode. It'll be one of a number that we'll do prepping us for Jupiter's entrance into cancer. Of course, we'll be doing horoscopes, a variety of different archetypal explorations.
So this is sort of just the beginning, but I think that this will be a fun way to set the stage. So before we get into it, remember to like and subscribe. It really does help our channel grow.
We thank you so much, and welcome all of the new subscribers who've recently joined. You can find transcripts of any of these daily talks on the website, which is NightlightAstrology.com.
We are now officially into our enrollment season for our year one course, and there's a master class that's about to begin as well. So let me take you over to the website and show you those really quick.
Go to nightlightastrology.com, click on the Courses page, and you can see the first year course right here: Ancient Astrology for the Modern Mystic. This is our first year class in ancient Hellenistic astrology.
Everything we do includes a modern psychological perspective infused into the programming. But this is a class in Hellenistic astrology. If that's something that you haven't learned about yet, or you're brand new to astrology and want to go deeper, this is a course that is going to set you up to practice for other people, if that's your intention.
But it's also a class that many people take just for the sake of their own spiritual enrichment. Anyway, you'll find everything the course includes. Next week, at the end of every daily video, I'll be including an informational video that will tell you all about the program in depth.
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We want to make sure that people aren't priced out of studying a sacred topic. So please feel free to take advantage of that, and we'll try to set you up so that you're not too stressed out financially.
Now, on the Courses page, you'll also see the Master Class series. There are four master classes that run at Nightlight year-round, and the one that is beginning here very shortly, starting on April 11, is a series of classes that are exploring the 10th, second, and sixth houses.
These are called the Arta houses in Indian astrology. They are associated with the work we do in the world. So this is a deep dive into the meanings of those houses and how they are all connected.
Check that out, too, if you're interested. At the end of today's talk, I will also be telling you more about my wife Ashley's herbal apprenticeship program, which is beginning.
Lots of classes start in the spring for both my wife and I. So I'll be very excited to tell you more about her work at the end of today's video. So on that note, I'm very excited to bring Ashley back to the show.
Hey, hi. Thanks for having me.
Yeah, I think, like, there's—I thought of this idea somewhat recently where Jupiter's entering cancer. Ashley, for those of you who are meeting my wife for the first time, she comes on the show occasionally to talk about all sorts of things, but especially the pairing of plant medicine with astrology, which is a really old marriage that has been a part of our marriage for a long time now.
But there's no one that I know of that is more personally invested in the worship and care and respect for the Goddess. My wife has been a long-time interested, devoted student of goddesses from all over the world, and especially the crossover between the study and worship of the goddess and plant medicine.
There's an intimate connection, because plant medicine is earth-based, and many Goddesses are inherently about our connection to the body and earth, among other things. But anyway, so I'm just really glad to have you here today to talk about this.
Thank you. Yeah, it's a topic, as you have just said, that is very dear to me. And yeah, I hope it just shares some ways people can connect to the Goddess archetype, in case they're new to it or are looking for new ways.
So the plants are a great avenue, and so I'll share some ideas there. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. What I'm going to do is just make the astrological portion of this very clear, so that we can then talk about several goddesses that those of you who are listening may intentionally engage with.
Whether you have an altar practice or in any other ways, there's many approaches to engaging with Goddess energy during this transit we're about to talk about. So we'll kind of give you some thoughts about that, as well as some plant allies that pair nicely with the upcoming transit of Jupiter in Cancer.
But let's look at it on the real-time clock to begin with. Here you can see this is about four in the afternoon, central time, on June 9. This is coming up really shortly.
You know, on my channel, we like to get ahead of the transits and start meditating on them, so to speak, and opening our hearts and minds to the archetypal meaning of a planet in a sign, especially ones that will spend quite a lengthy period of time in a sign.
Jupiter in Cancer will be there for a full year. Jupiter's full transit through the Zodiac is about 12 years, which means we get about one year per sign with Jupiter, which is nice.
It feels like we get one trip around the sun with Jupiter in the temple of each sign of the zodiac. But here it is on June 9. There's going to be all sorts of interesting aspects.
Of course, we've got a Jupiter-Saturn square that comes very close upon the entrance of—right after Jupiter enters Cancer, Jupiter will square Saturn in Aries, who has just entered at the end of May.
So it's pretty dynamic right off the bat. Not to mention the fact that you may notice the sun is creeping up behind Jupiter. This means that Jupiter is going through its death and rebirth, which will take place around June 24.
Jupiter, being in its own exaltation, is protected from the combustion, which is called being in your chariot—a planet being in its own chariot. We're going to talk about all of those interesting dynamics closer to the entrance of Jupiter into Cancer.
For today, what I want to focus on is just the basics. Jupiter will spend a long time in Cancer, has a long retrograde in Cancer, and then it comes out of Cancer and enters the sign of Leo, where everything gets big and bold and flashy—Jupiter and Leo.
So I just remember that transit so much—everything got so big, just the kind of thing that Leo loves anyway. Jupiter will enter Leo around June 30 of 2026.
So June 9 to June 30—one year plus. That's a long time to work with Jupiter in the sign where it was traditionally exalted. This is a wonderful place for Jupiter in terms of some of the most positive significations that Jupiter has to offer.
There's a shadow side to everything. We're not going to be burying our heads in the sand and using a dignity to ignore the potential for shadows that come up. We'll definitely look at that.
But this is really, generally speaking, a very good placement for Jupiter. Now, one of the interesting connections—if you remember that Cancer was called the Gateway of Mankind.
It's called that because it starts at the summer solstice, seen from the symbolic perspective of the Northern Hemisphere solar year. From that moment, the arc of the sun in the sky reaches its maximum height, closest to the Pole Star, which was considered the closest that the path of the sun could get to something that represented the ideal, the realm of the Aeon, or the archetypes themselves—the thoughts in the mind of God.
That place up there is the closest that we can get. And then from there, the arc of the sun comes down toward the southern horizon, which is the Earth's plane.
As that descent happens, ancient astrologers saw that as the descent of spirit into matter—that the universe is a manifestation of Divine creativity, and is therefore depicted in the sign of the Moon and the exaltation of Jupiter, two planets that are associated with life.
One of the ancient words that was used was "bios," like BIOS, where we get biology from. This is a place that is embodied and alive.
Of course, what comes with that is impermanence and change and flux, which the Moon represents. But generally speaking, Jupiter was a planet that was associated with the proliferation of life, material life.
It was the fertility. In astrology, Jupiter ruled sperm, for example, and the Moon ruled the womb and was associated with women, childbirth, mothers, family, and the sort of ecological biomatrix of life on Earth.
So this sign is associated with the flourishing of life in the start of summer, with birth, and with the entrance of the Divine Spirit into the material form. For that reason, this is the temple of the Goddess, because the Goddess's domain is the incarnate world.
And when you place Jupiter, this sign of great fertility, into the sign of the Goddess—into the sign of Earth—we think of Cancer as a water sign, but water is life, and that's another way of thinking about it.
You come out of the womb, the watery womb of our mothers. But it's our sinews and our bones and our veins and our blood and our water. And so Jupiter, also a planet that's long been associated with religion and faith—one thing that is absolutely essential all spiritual traditions have told us is once you are in this material world, you can very easily forget your divine nature, which is why we have to be in practices of remembrance.
Just like a mother remembers her child and has this kind of devotional remembrance—where is my child? Are they okay? Are they safe? This sign teaches us that in order to remain spiritually conscious, we have to remember our divine source, even as we move through life, even as we have a life to live.
This is why, for example, the Moon is a planet whose sacred number, 108, is associated with 108 beads of the mala, which are chanted on as a way of reciting and remembering the Divine.
Circumambulation around shrines to remember the Divine is a lunar pattern. All of these patterns are about ways of joining heaven and earth. So one of the best ways of thinking about Jupiter in Cancer is that we have a full year in front of us where worship of the Goddess—seen as devotion, remembrance, connection, empathy, compassion, sensitivity, healing, emotional intelligence, connectivity to our bodies and our instincts—Jupiter in Cancer really is a year in front of us in which our ability to connect to the Goddess and to make sacred the plane of our Earth, of our body, of nature, is just profound.
And so on that note, I wanted to bring Ashley in today to share with us a few goddesses and a few plants that you could choose to work with once Jupiter's in Cancer.
But just to be clear, you could really work with any goddess. Yes, you know, it's wide open, but we thought we'd give you a few to work with, because I think we're entering a unique time where sensitivity to the Goddess—or if you've never really developed a relationship with a goddess, you can bring one into your life.
And it is a very good time to do so, to receive the blessings and to make the connection. So on that note, I'm going to hand things over to Ashley, who's going to talk to us about a few goddesses.
Yeah, yeah. Thank you. And I love, too, that Jupiter goes into a retrograde, because I think in the process of getting to know the goddess, there's—you know, we often enter into worship with a lot of excitement, but then there's a natural sort of pulling back and a revision of, like, okay, and in that revision process, it deepens you.
So even if you know all the things I'm going to mention today, you know, take them and trust the process of how it unfolds for you. It might look a little different. It might not come back until a later time, but I think this is going to be a really beautiful year for those people who feel a draw towards the sacred feminine.
And I think the image of the Goddess—you know, before we go into specific goddesses, I just wanted to take a moment to say that the worship of the goddess figurine is a very ancient one and goes back to the earliest figurines we find, which are from the Neolithic time, between 10,000 BCE and 2000 BCE.
And, you know, we see these figurines of a very rounded female form with full breasts and often decorated with symbols of snakes and birds and eggs.
And the goddess was worshiped as a symbol of the cycle—the regenerative cycle—and the cycle of not just, you know, birth and death, but birth, death, and regeneration.
And so, you know, a lot of these ancient cultures throughout the world really saw the goddess as a reminder of hope—of what we see in the natural world. As the seasons change, the cycles change, the moon phases change, but that in death, it doesn't mean the end—in death, it's just the end of a particular phase.
And there's this whole cycle of regeneration, and the goddess as an image was a reminder of that regenerative capacity—that a woman can, you know, she can birth and birth and birth, and every spring she births, and, you know, every winter she dies, and it's this beautiful regenerative cycle.
So I think even if you don't resonate with the two goddesses that I share, that maybe you can find your own symbol of a goddess. And I'll have Adam include a link in the description to a wonderful video called *Signs Out of Time*, and it features the work of Marija Gimbutas, who is a Lithuanian archaeologist and anthropologist who spent her entire career focused on—by looking at these ancient figurines of the goddess in Old Europe.
And I've been down many rabbit holes over the last few months reading her work, but you can find some images there that you might also feel really resonant with. So I just wanted to give that as a preface.
So the two goddesses that I chose to work with for this particular Jupiter cycle—one is from the Greek tradition, and then one is from sort of a more modern tradition.
So let's start with the first goddess, which is Artemis. So Artemis is the goddess of—and people often think of her as just the goddess of the moon or the goddess of the hunt, but Artemis is actually the protector of the forest.
Sort of in her most—in a lot of the ancient, you know, Greek stories, she's actually the daughter of Zeus and Leto—I think Leto is her mother's name—who was banished.
And she was born banished on an island, and her twin brother is the Greek god Apollo. And so she was born first out of the twins, and her mother was having a very difficult birth, and so she actually midwifed her brother into the world—her brother Apollo, who was the Sun God.
And so we see she's often associated with the moon and with midwifery, and protector of young women and the protector of childbirth, because of that—the way she was brought into the world, and the way she helped usher in the birth of Apollo, or the sun.
She's also associated—you know, she grew up in the forests and had a very deep love of wild animals. And so you can see that she's often flanked with, you know, stags and wolves and dogs surrounding her.
And she's the guardian of the forest and the protector of the fairness of hunting. And so, you know, she was the goddess that if you were to go hunting in the woods, you would pray to her and give her offerings so that you would have both a successful hunt, but you would also be protected from the curse of hunting too much and taking too much from the forest.
And if you took too much from the forest, you would find yourself being cursed by her. And I won't go into all the stories, but there's lots of stories of people being turned into stags and being cursed by her because they were greedy and took too much from the forest.
So I think we can think about this as a goddess of helping us to make good choices with how much we take from the earth. And I know for myself, as an herbalist in my own gardens, I'm always very aware that I don't harvest too much, that I always leave enough of my herbs for the bees and for the bunnies and for the deer that come through, who are also a part of this land that I live on.
And so we can, you know, think about maybe having a statue of Artemis on our altar as a reminder of that balance—a balance of that trust.
She's also associated with the moon because of the bow and arrow that she uses to hunt, as being the goddess of the hunt. So often you'll see that crescent moon-shaped either on her, you know, on her crown, or you'll see her bow that's shaped like a crescent moon.
And so she also protects fertility and cycles and supports the natural cycling of women's flow. So the herb that I—that is associated with her is Artemisia.
And I chose Artemisia absinthium, which is one of, I think, the oldest classically associated herbs with Artemis. But we also could use Artemisia annua, or sweet Annie, and Artemisia vulgaris, or mugwort.
Those are, you know, three different Artemisia species, but all of these artemisias are bitter, and they're like Artemis—they should be used in moderation, so they are toxic in high doses.
Here's a beautiful picture of the Artemisia leaf. I often, when I teach my students, we go on herb walks and say, "It looks like a little chicken foot." And it kind of has this like sort of chicken-foot shape to it.
But some of the signatures of this to Artemis and to the moon is that you can see there's a little bit of a silvery shadow or coating to the leaves of the artemisias. And if you flip that leaf over, the underside is almost purely this sort of like whitish-green.
So it has the signatures of this reflective, whitish, moon-like, lunar quality. And it's also an herb that was used to support women's cycles.
And this isn't to support—you know, this herb is not to be used in pregnancy, because it brings on the menses. It brings on the period. So if you have a sluggish period, if you have low blood flow, this was an herb that was classically used to bring on the menstrual cycle.
And in that way, too, it was used to bring on the cycle in case of unwanted pregnancy. Now, in modern herbalism, we do not recommend that, because to get that effect, you have to use high doses, which can be very toxic to the woman.
So there are other options that you can research out there. But, you know, classically, this was used, and Artemis was considered to be a virginal goddess. So she was a goddess that protected chastity in women.
And this idea also of, like, lust and greed and over—you know, over-hunting—this was an herb of protection against that. And, you know, in a woman's womb, it also allowed the woman to not hold her blood too long.
And, you know, in a lot of ancient temples, before there were human sacrifices, they actually gave menstrual blood as a sacrifice, because it was considered to be such a sign of fertility and an offering back on these sacred altars.
So the blood was a very sacred symbol in the ancient world, and Artemisia was an herb that was associated with helping a woman bring on her blood.
So how do we use it? You might be wondering, "Well, okay, those are all interesting, but how do I maybe incorporate this herb into my own ritual spaces?"
So one thing I wanted to show you—this is some Artemisia annua. This is the sweet Annie, and it's this beautiful herb. And you can see it's gone to seed. It's very aromatic.
I don't even have to touch it—the cabinet that I store this in, the whole cabinet smells like this herb. It's very, very fragrant, and it's an insect repellent.
So what I do is I take these every autumn—I have wreaths for each season, and I'll stick these little stalks of the artemisias into the wreath at the front door as a protection.
So it wards away evil spirits, but it also keeps bugs away. And, you know, we have box elders where we live, and so it keeps them off of the front door. It wards away bugs and vermin.
And the artemisias are also known as being anti-parasitic. And they were used traditionally in ancient Greece and Rome to dispel worms, and specifically roundworm parasitic infections.
So it has this very anti-venom and very cleansing and getting rid of vermin, getting rid of bad spirit associations in herbalism. So you can use it just like that.
You can use it on an altar as an herb to sort of protect and sanctify the space. Use it in smudging or maybe even hanging it above a doorway.
And especially for young women, it was considered to be an herb of protection for young women. So if you have a young daughter, you could also use it in her room as a bow to protect her.
And another way you can use it is internally, but this is a low-dose and intermittent herb. So just like the cycle of the moon—you know, the sun shines all the time, but the moon waxes and wanes.
So this is an herb that you use for a short amount of time, and then you stop using it. So I would recommend—as in my practice, if this is an herb I'm using for a woman who is maybe having very slow, stagnant cycles, I might have her take three to five drops in that week before her period is due.
That would be a clinical way to use it. If you want to use it more just energetically, you could take a single-drop dose once a day—just take one drop of the tincture on your tongue and just sit with it.
It's very strong, very bitter, very aromatic, and you'll get that hit of medicine in your body pretty quickly. I will say that the Artemisia absinthium, which is the classical wormwood—this is the herb that was used in absinthe.
And you may recall in Paris, in bohemian culture, it was like a very hot—
Yeah, exactly. So it—and the reason for that is because thujone, which is one of the compounds found in both thuja and in wormwood, is slightly mind-altering, so it does have a little bit of a euphoric quality to it.
But we don't know for sure if it was the thujone that made people get a little bit extra creative and loopy, or if it was the green dye that they used, which was actually poisonous and hepatotoxic, right?
So we're not 100% sure, but now absinthe has, you know—they took it off the market in 1910; it was banned throughout Europe. But now we're starting to see it actually being distributed again throughout Europe and now in the United States, because they still use this particular plant, but they don't use that green dye.
And so I think we're pretty sure that was what was the problem back in the day. But I think that's kind of an interesting backstory, too, about this particular plant.
Yeah, you know, I'm thinking of Liz Greene, who wrote extensively about the virgin goddesses in archetypal astrology. And one of the things that she said that I always thought was interesting was that one of the ways that chastity was understood in relation to the virgin goddesses was around marriage more than sex, and around ownership more than like sensuality.
So virgin goddess isn't necessarily asexual or prude or not having sensual feelings or experiences, as much as she was a protector of the independent spirit of women.
And chastity could be connected to that in the ancient world, because ownership and sex were like hand in hand—you know, like the marriage had to be consummated, and then it was official.
And so she just made that point that, like, you could understand the virgin goddesses protecting chastity as a literal thing, but also as a figurative thing that has to do with the independent choices and dignity of a woman.
And I always thought that was kind of a neat way of looking at it, too. Yeah, yeah. I mean, and Artemis—I mean, she is the goddess of the wild and the wildness of the forest.
And so yes, she was never allowed to marry. So she, you know, lived as an independent woman in the forest, guarding the animals and the plants—you know, like being a protector of them.
So, yeah, I think this is a beautiful, you know, image to work with for, you know, if you're in a phase of life where you're really trying to get back to your own wild nature, you know, and getting back to, you know, who are you when you're not being watched?
Who are you when you're not, you know, trying to be things that other people want you to be? And that's a great meditation.
Yeah, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. Yeah, what you're saying just now just reminded me of being a kid, and I was so confused.
I walked in one day, and on the coffee table there was a book that my mom was reading, and I think it was called, like, *Women Who Run With the Wolves*, or something like that—a classic, right?
Everyone knows it, but I remember as a kid being like, "Is my mom going to run off into—" my poor Cancerian soul was so worried. No, I'm just playing. But yeah, I remember that book, and it's interesting, because I'm fairly sure that that book was sort of invoking a lot of the elements of Artemis that we were just talking about.
Absolutely, yeah. And just one more brief thing before we move on—the work of a therapist that I really enjoy watching, her work—she talks a lot about the power of imagery and fantasy and not necessarily having to fulfill it.
That it's important for people—men and women, all people—to have these places that they can go inside of these imaginal realms, where they can explore these archetypal spirits, and not necessarily have to live them out, but just to have the inner freedom to explore them.
And I think that that's what Artemis can do. You know, we don't literally have to run naked through the woods, you know, screaming—we could, but, you know, what we might—but we can also read books and look at images and paint and talk about these things, and that can also give us an experience of them.
Yeah, yeah. That's well said. Um, okay, let's—should we go on next?
Okay, so the next goddess is the Virgin Mary. And I wanted to say this about the Virgin Mary—and I was raised Catholic, so the Virgin Mary was an image that was in my, you know, ancestral lineage from Sicily and from Lithuania and from, you know, Czech and Wales.
So I have a deep connection to that as an image. And what's so beautiful, too, that I've been learning and uncovering over the last few years is that, you know, many ancient goddesses from, you know, the Neolithic and the pagan traditions were incorporated into the image of the Virgin Mary as Christianity started to spread.
And like Vesta, and, you know, even—who was it—Minerva—these ancient goddesses from the Greek tradition were also sort of incorporated into the worship of the Virgin Mary.
So we don't have to think about the Virgin Mary like—I've been really coming to terms with this in my own heart—like, oh, the Mary, you know—Mary almost like opened up her cloak and absorbed these goddesses in.
And these ancient women from my ancestral line said, "Oh, I see you worship a goddess too. Awesome, cool. Let's bring her onto the altar as well—as Minerva, as well as Vesta."
So that's kind of how I've been incorporating Mary into my life. And I think she's an image that a lot of us, you know—yeah, we may have grown up with and seen.
And so Mary is a virginal goddess, like Adam was saying—like she was a goddess of chastity, but also a goddess of devotion, and, you know, really a goddess of tolerance, of humility, of grace, of grace-granting.
And I think we can call upon the image of Mary not only as the Virgin, but also as the mother. And I feel like that—you know, the way the beautiful images of her holding baby Jesus, and, you know, her beautiful cloak open, bringing in other children—it is such a wonderful way of bringing in the mother archetype as well.
And in regard to her, you know, the way that she's associated with plants—in the Old Testament, in the Song of Solomon, it is said, "I am a Rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys."
And so the Song of Solomon calls about this—the Rose of Sharon, which is a plant in the Malvaceae family, which is like, basically, it looks a lot like a marshmallow or a hibiscus flower.
And we have had the Rose of Sharon in many of our yards in Maryland, and it's this very, very open, voluptuous flower, and it's very demulcent and very healing and very soothing and very softening.
And so I think about—when I think about the Virgin Mary and this image of Mary as the goddess, it's like this image of the salve, of this wound-healer, an image of the softness.
And so we could think about, you know, any plant in the mallow family as being related to the Virgin Mary, and then the lily of the valley as being these tender little bells that come back and symbolize, you know, the purity of faith and of devotion.
There's also some really beautiful prayers that were—that I've come across recently that I wanted to share. And so one particular prayer—it goes like this:
"Salve, Maria, maris stella," and "protect us in danger and grant us your mercy." And so "salve Maria" in Latin—you know, I whenever I would hear, growing up Catholic, like "Hail Mary," I was always like, "Hail—Hail Mary," I feel like that's like a really harsh word.
But "salve Maria" is like, "oh"—"salve" means to heal. "Salve" also means to welcome in, and we get the English word "salve," which is a healing ointment, from the Latin word "salve."
So "salve Maria" has been a mantra that I've been using recently in my artwork and just in my own prayer practices as this—like thinking of like bringing in Mary to soften, to heal, to soothe.
"Salve" is also to soothe. And we have the Latin name for rosemary—"Salvia rosmarinus." And so it's the healing of the rose of the sea.
And so "rosmarinus" comes from the Latin "ros marinus," which is the dew drops of the ocean. And in the prayer I just mentioned, it is "salve Maria, stella maris"—Star of the Sea.
And I, you know, I just—my mind goes right to rosemary. It's like the sacred dew drops on the rosemary plant, which natively grows throughout the Mediterranean region on the cliffs of the sea, and it gathers these beautiful dew drops, and those are part of the medicine.
Those dew drops are actually gathered as a medicine in themselves to bring healing to the mind and healing to the spirit.
So we can use some of these ancient prayers, these old prayers, also as part of maybe our meditative practice. And we can call upon this medicine of rosemary to help us with remembrance.
It was often called the herb of remembrance in Shakespeare. And the story of the connection of Mary—of the Virgin Mary and rosemary goes like this:
That when Mary was fleeing and went to Egypt, she took her blue cloak and cast it over a rosemary bush. And when she picked it up, the rosemary took on this beautiful, fragrant blossoming of these bluish-purple flowers that reflected the beauty of the sky and the beauty of the sea and cast this beautiful fragrance into the air.
And, you know, we often see the Virgin Mary, you know, being cloaked in that beautiful blue—that beautiful blue fabric.
So the rosemary has been associated with a symbol of enduring beauty, of love and remembrance, and also evergreenness, because in more Mediterranean climates, rosemary stays in bloom all year round.
It will bloom, and it'll be this evergreen sort of bluish-tinted flower and leaf, even in the dead of winter—or the winter in Greece and in Italy.
And so it's a symbol of enduring love and evergreenness. And I love that image of Mary as being sort of evergreen and her love as being ever-enduring.
So how do we use rosemary as a medicine? There's lots of ways. As I mentioned with the artemisias, you can use it—you can dry it and use it in wreaths.
You can place it on altars as an offering. We know rosemary also has a wonderful cooking herb. So this is an herb you can use.
And I have some here from my rosemary bush from out in the gardens. It's very dried at this point, but we can use—we can just crush up these dried leaves and add them to soften any meats.
We can add them to bean dishes to cut down on flatulence and gas. It's a wonderful carminative for getting the digestive fires going, and it's very much associated with fire in the elemental traditions because of its strong smell and its pointed, like, flame-shaped leaves.
It is also something that we can burn. And I actually have on my altar to Mary—I have a candle lit, but I have a little bowl that I put herbs in, and so I have some rosemary in this offering dish.
And so you can just burn it. You could burn it and make it as a smoke and waft it as part of your spiritual practice or your altar practice.
You can diffuse the essential oil in any sort of oil diffuser. That's a really nice way to bring rosemary into the space, and it's a great air purifier as well.
And the last way you can use it is as a hair oil. So it was used traditionally as a scalp builder. So not only will it penetrate into the brain—and it's supposed to help with memory—and actually, clinical studies have shown that it helps with dementia and Alzheimer's patients—but also it thickens the scalp, or it thickens the hair follicles on the scalp.
And there's a wonderful company that my friend runs called Bear Wallow Herbs, and she makes a rosemary hair oil, and it's fresh rosemary infused in olive oil—extra virgin olive oil.
It's beautiful. So I'll have Adam include a link in the description so you can purchase it from her. And she's just a, you know, small-scale herbalist living in Mount Shasta, California.
She makes wonderful medicine. So her hair oil is wonderful. And so that's another way you can use it. And you get that really nice smell, and you get the medicine in your scalp.
So those are the two goddesses and two herbs that I came up with that I think really beautifully would pair well with working with Jupiter in Cancer for the year ahead.
And you can start now. You don't have to wait until June to start these practices.
Yeah, and, like, I think that the reason that we thought this would be a fun episode is really because we want to give people so many different ways of thinking about transits on this channel—and not only that, but how to bring those transits into, you know, participation, right?
Like, a participatory, animistic cosmos is the framework within which astrology originally existed, and it should still today.
If you don't have an altar, you can work with the herbs. You know, if you have an altar, bring some goddesses on. There's so many goddesses with so many herbs. We just picked two, you know.
But thank you—that was so enriching and interesting. I really appreciate it. And I want to tell people a little bit more about you so that people can follow you, because I love you, but you're also wonderful.
Everyone that likes your channel also loves you. So on YouTube, you can find Ashley's channel, Sky House Herbs, and you will find regular, weekly content with the crossover between plant spirit medicine and our personal inner lives.
It is wonderful content. Ashley and I have been making content together. We were yoga studio owners for almost a decade.
So if you like what Ashley's bringing, you're going to find regular content like that on her channel. Instagram—you can follow her—same thing, Sky House Herbs.
And her website is SkyHouseHerbs.com. Now, I want to take you over there, because Ashley's in the midst of her own enrollment season right now, and that is for her first-year herbal apprenticeship course.
If you go to the Courses page—Ashley has a master's degree in clinical herbal medicine and has been teaching and leading in the herbal community for a very long time—as long as I've known you, and before I've known you.
So that's like 20 years now. And you'll find that the 2025 Herbal Foundations Apprenticeship—it starts on April 24 this month.
And you can learn all about what the program includes on this page, and at the bottom, you're going to find need-based pricing, as well as the different payment plans and payment options.
There are some really good deals going on. And obviously, just like all of my programs, Ashley and I have been doing donation-based, sliding-scale work in our yoga studios and our classes for a very long time.
So if you need a little help to make the class happen, you can apply there. Do you want to say a few things about your program and just kind of the outline of it?
Sure, I think—thank you. Thank you for letting me talk about my course. I think the main thing that people walk away with is an experience of working with plants as not just like medicine—like, "oh, this herb for this thing"—but herbs as friends and allies, herbs that you can call upon for not only physical support but also for emotional support and spiritual and mental support.
So we go through—we have 12 herbs that we work with throughout the course that are tonics that can be used, you know, like interchangeably with, you know, your daily diet.
And then we have additional herbs that we work with in smaller doses, so you can get to know some of the more powerful herbs and how to work with those on an, you know, intermittent basis.
And then we also teach you how to make your own medicines—like tinctures and salves, vinegars and infused oils—and how to use herbs as a community herbalist.
Because I think a lot of people—they might not necessarily want to sit down one-on-one and do clinical herbalism, but they want to know, "How do I confidently talk about herbs within my family, within my larger community? How do I maybe make my own products to sell on the market or at my local co-op?"
So we kind of talk about all of those things and really empower people to start using herbs as a very viable way of self-care and also community healing.
The course is correspondence-based, which means you're going to watch modules of pre-recorded content. But then in between the modules, you meet as a class with Ashley for tutoring and Q&A and an ability to really talk through each module as you go.
Those are also recorded. So for some reason, if you couldn't make anything live, everything is there for you to move through at your own pace. Alright?
So that's twice a month. So we have you meet with me once a month online. And then my course assistant, Janelle, she does study sessions once a month, so twice a month you have an opportunity to meet with us to, yeah, ask questions and just dive a little deeper into the content.
Awesome. Yeah, and there is a second-year apprenticeship that's starting in the fall of this year. So for some of you, you're going to find that this journey is one that can go quite deep.
You can take the year one course and be fine. A lot of people in her year one program have already signed up for her year two program. So, you know, they do build upon each other, so you're going to want to start with year one.
But there's just a lot here—and a lot of value in taking some concentrated time to work with plant medicine and to study in an energetic, symbolic, spiritual paradigm, but one that also gives you background in things like plant chemistry and the way in which the clinical herbal world will think and talk about things.
So you're getting really the best of both worlds—both hemispheres of the brain engaged. Anyway, thank you so much for being here again.
You can find Ashley's work at Sky House Herbs on YouTube, or Sky House Herbs on Instagram. SkyHouseHerbs.com is the website.
Yeah, we'll, for sure, have you back. There's so many transits, and we're trying to be a little bit more deliberate about offering people remediation advice with plants.
Ever since we started our Roots and Spheres monthly moon circle, this has become more important to us. There's so much value that you can get out of not only tracking astrology but finding meaningful ways to bring that symbolism—through the doctrine of signatures and correspondences—into your body with plants that were correlated with various signs and planets for thousands of years.
So that's really what our Roots and Spheres program is dedicated to as well. Anyway, that's it for today. Thank you, sweetheart, for being here.
Thank you so much for having me on, letting me talk about goddesses and herbs.
Oh, well, you're one of my goddesses. All right. I love you. Bye.
Love you too. Bye, everyone.
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