Abramelin Strength & Datura Guidance

Abramelin continues to bring me various benefits. One of the things I haven’t blogged about is a great improvement in my health. I was bumping along with diabetes and not doing anything about it for quite a while there. I thought my fatigue was due to getting older. When I finally got myself a blood glucose meter, I saw a truth I could not dismiss. This sent me into a real tailspin emotionally for a week or so. During that time I did some research about non-pharmaceutical ways to deal with diabetes (I cannot easily give in to Big Pharma). I chose to try a low-carb/high fat diet. In the past I have made various health decisions and have had difficulty sticking to them. Not this time. I have stuck to that diet and lost 25 lbs so far, and my blood sugar is edging into normal range (105 this morning, for instance). I believe that it is the strength I am gaining through Abramelin that has allowed me both to look that glucose meter right in the “eye” and to make the changes necessary to get past this obstacle.

A side effect of the lower blood sugar is that I now see that my fatigue had nothing to do with my age and everything to do with my blood sugar levels. I have been able to work steadily in the garden with no more problems than any person who overdoes it in the yard and has some aches and pains that evening.

But I believe Abramelin is also the reason that I was able to examine my gardening plans and drastically change them, to shift away from what I now see as a misalignment. I have always grown a few vegetables, mostly the Solanaceaea–peppers, eggplants, and tomatoes–but in recent years I attempted more and more, even though I did not actually have the time to engage in such gardening. I have a very full plate just growing things for Alchemy Works and for my own magic. Nor was I especially good at growing vegetables, in great contrast to my ability to grow perennials and herbs. But I am nothing if not mulish. So I kept on, getting more and more frustrated each year, and more against my own interests, as I focused attention on broccoli and let the mandrakes sink or swim. Such foolishness.

Even two or three years ago I knew that I was going off in the wrong direction (for me) with this growing food thing, but I seemed unable to resist it. I did have good rational reasons for wanting to grow food. But I became more and more dissatisfied with my gardening altogether because of these attempts. I started thinking maybe I should move to Rochester and live in a loft. In terms of the business, I focused more and more on making incense and oils instead of the seeds.

This spring has been radically different. I began in the usual way this winter, although realizing after the problems we had with cool weather and late blight last year that my vegetable plans would probably be even less successful than before and in short, I was wasting my time. But I still bought a bunch of veggie seeds. Usually I fall very behind not only in the business but in the garden in spring because that is when orders flood in and when the garden is calling the most loudly. But this spring I decided to chuck all the veggie plans except for stuff that is easy for me, like peppers in pots and some peas and beans on fences. The rest of the garden I dedicated entirely to herbs for witchcraft and my own use.

What a difference. I have never been able to get so many plants started and in the ground as I have this year. In the past I have had a huge bottleneck with seeds germinating and needing to be put into pots and then with seeds in pots ready to go out into the ground and not getting there. It is a great deal of work, requires a substantial input of money, and requires a lot of organization to be able to get hundreds of plants into the right places for them at the right time. Inevitably I would have to toss many plants that just got neglected to death. Not this year.

I mentioned in a previous post how I’d gotten the datura out pretty much first, before anything else from seed, and how that meant for me that I’d gotten my priorities straight. It’s like something came loose in my chest that my guide plant was put first instead of some broccoli transplants. Not only has my relationship to my garden changed, but my relationship to datura has changed too. It feels much easier.

All this has led me to reconsider the direction of my business. I have always been a very scattered person, one who gets bored easily. I will go off and dig a deep hole and then go off in the opposite direction to dig another. It seems to be my nature. This can be a real help in one’s work, depending on one’s job,  but it can also cause a lot of disruption. Over the past few days I have been thinking a great deal about this issue and have concluded that I really need for me and for my business to narrow the focus on plants. I enjoy creating oils and incense, but from the very beginning of Alchemy Works ten years ago, the seeds have been the heart of my business. And they are at the heart of my writing as well. Just as I have spent so much of the last couple of years avoiding datura and it has kept popping up in my garden and in visions, over and over, refusing to leave me alone, so has my interest in plants come back stronger and stronger, sustaining me in so many other aspects of my life, from cooking to writing.

Over the weekend I dug through various works on herbal magic and medicine for ideas on expanding my seed offerings. I have found tons. This is going to take some time, but gradually, I will increase the number of seeds I sell, incorporating many more that are used in witchcraft, paganism, and the homely arts, from cooking to dyeing to healing.  I’m starting with the more common herbs; in the next couple of weeks I will be adding about 30 new herb seeds. I have access to a large number of seeds of the more unusual perennial plants that were traditionally used in European magic. I had already planned out several future books that are associated with these plants as well.

It is difficult to express how freeing this is. It is like I have been traveling a path for many years and kept stumbling over someone in my way who turned out to be me.

Datura, I’m awake now.