The Magic of Flowers: A Guide to Their Metaphysical Uses & Properties - Tess Whitehurst 2013
Hollyhock
The Flowers
No one knows how long hollyhock has been around, except perhaps hollyhock herself. We do know that a Neanderthal man was buried with hollyhocks some 50,000 years ago. It’s said hollyhock hails from Asia and came to Europe during the Crusades, and that hollyhock was one of the first botanical immigrants to the New World.
From a magical perspective, hollyhock is a powerhouse of ancient power. It’s as if this flower been absorbing and cataloging spiritual wisdom since the dawn of time—and if you’re ready, hollyhock’s happy to share.
On a practical note, be careful with hollyhock, especially if you have sensitive skin or allergies, as simply touching this plant can irritate the skin.
Magical Uses
Healing from the Past
Wherever the past is involved, hollyhock can help. So if you’re tired of being mired in old stuff from your recent past, your distant past, your childhood, or even your past lives, you might want to pay hollyhock a visit, work with the essence, or otherwise employ hollyhock in your healing endeavors. Hollyhock can also be an excellent complement to therapies such as counseling, past-life regression, and energy healing.
Healing Land
Just like people, land remembers. As such, whole areas of land can seem to be oppressed or traumatized by past events and situations. If you feel that an area of land in your care isn’t as nourishing and vibrant as it wants to be, or if you know that something negative may have occurred on it, it can be helpful to perform healing rituals to free it up to be its most beautiful, vivacious self. For example, you might draw a circle in the dirt large enough to stand inside and burn sage to the four directions, calling on faeries or devas of the land to help release and transmute negative energies into positive ones.
In addition to clearing rituals, planting hollyhock on the land can help release and transmute old energies and realign that particular corner of the earth with its original power and grace. That way, your home (or business) can thrive and your magic can be strengthened by the healthy earth energies swirling around you.
When planting hollyhocks for this purpose, relax your mind as you intuitively choose the places the seeds or plants naturally seem to want to be planted. Alternatively, you can tune in to the land and see where it seems to most crave hollyhock plants. To further fortify the healing effects, you might empower white quartz crystal points in sunlight and then bury them, with the points pointing straight up, about four to five inches from the top of the soil.
Reclaiming and Realigning with Heritage
Our heritage might be defined as our spiritual and emotional roots. Having a heritage to connect with can help us to feel grounded in the present while also supported and bolstered by the past. Whether the heritage we most connect with comes from our ancestors, our past lives, or both, hollyhock can help us reclaim it and realign with it in a healthy way. And if we fear we’ve lost, forgotten, or been seemingly disconnected from our spiritual or emotional roots, hollyhock can help us remember and rediscover them. For either purpose, you might simply tune in to a blossoming hollyhock, take the essence, or perform a ritual like the heritage vision quest.
HERITAGE VISION QUEST
Sit in a comfortable position in front of a blossoming hollyhock with your spine straight. Take some deep breaths and consciously relax your body as you gaze at the plant. Feel the weight of your body on the earth and come fully into the present moment. Memorize the feeling and appearance of the hollyhock as best you can, and then close your eyes while still envisioning the plant, as if you’re seeing it through your eyelids. Take your time with this: open and close your eyes until you feel you have a clear and living picture in your mind’s eye. Then silently, from your heart, communicate to the plant what you’d like help with. Explain why you’d like to reconnect with your heritage and how you feel this will help you. Then imagine that the hollyhock turns into a large, beautiful mirror. Gaze into that mirror and see what you see. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t make any sense at first—just let your vision be what it is. When this feels complete, open your eyes. It might be a good idea to jot down anything you’d like to remember in a journal or notebook. Then be sure to silently and earnestly thank the plant.
You can repeat this up to seven times, as long as you do it no more than once per day. Each time you may go deeper, so if you didn’t see anything the first time or if your vision was cloudy or distant, subsequent quests may yield more potent results. And, over time, the visions will be sown in your consciousness and remind you of or reconnect you with your heritage in the ways you most desire.
Reconnecting with Old Ways
The term “old ways” is often used to describe the traditions of people such as shamans, members of tribal cultures or folk religions, old wise women or men, and village healers. Of course, during way too many periods of history and even up to the present in some regions, people like this have been appallingly tortured and murdered because of the fear of witchcraft. Those of us with past-life memories of this type of abuse often crave reconnection with the old ways while simultaneously associating them with the horror we experienced. Even in this present life, many of us are raised with the false and hurtful idea that we will “burn in hell” if we practice anything remotely resembling the old ways. Needless to say, these fears can be an energy drain holding us back from being ourselves and accessing the fullness of our spiritual power.
One of hollyhock’s missions is to heal us from anything holding us back from reconnecting with the old ways and to dose us with a potent infusion of magical wisdom and power so that we can go forth proudly and reclaim our magical heritage. (Interestingly, it seems this plant may have been hard at work with this mission even during the Burning Times, as the medieval botanist Albertus Magnus recommended rubbing hollyhocks on the hands to protect oneself during a trial by fire.)
Remembering Past Lives
Considering how fuzzy (or missing) so many childhood memories seem to be, is it any wonder past-life memories are usually so deeply buried? Still, even if you don’t believe in past lives, consciously accessing past-life memories can be an extremely healing endeavor that can release old pain and untangle present challenges like nobody’s business. (If you don’t believe in them, you might think of them as stories emerging from your subconscious to help make sense of present challenges.)
If you decide you’d like to access past-life memories, try spending time with the flower or taking the essence—and be sure to pay attention to your dreams!
Strengthening Confidence and Spiritual Energy
The word pride can have positive or negative connotations, and hollyhock can give us a magical infusion of pride in its most positive sense. In other words, this flower can fill us with confidence and strengthen our spiritual energy field. Similarly (or perhaps identically), according to the author Judika Illes in The Element Encylopedia of 5000 Spells, just as hollyhock’s height allows it to dominate most gardens, it can be successfully employed in domination spells. What all this adds up to is if you want to boost your confidence and influence, hollyhock just may be the magical ingredient for you.
Try drinking a cold infusion of dried hollyhock blossoms (place a jar of water in the fridge overnight with a small bit of the blossoms inside, then strain) or eating a fresh blossom before any situation or event during which you’d like to shine with confidence and exude an increased amount of charisma. For this same purpose, you might also keep dried hollyhock blossoms about your person.
Strengthening Memory
Memory strengthening is just one more of hollyhock’s specialties. Try taking the essence regularly for general memory strengthening. You might also plant hollyhock around your home to help fortify your memory in a long-term way.
Magical Correspondences
Element: Earth
Gender: Balance of male and female
Planet: Jupiter