The Magic of Flowers: A Guide to Their Metaphysical Uses & Properties - Tess Whitehurst 2013

Honeysuckle
The Flowers

Honeysuckle always makes me think of the time when I inhaled her delicious scent (allowing her delightful energy to lift my spirits and mood) before going to the grocery store. After shopping, I glanced in my rear-view mirror and noticed that I had a very noticeable coating of white pollen around my nostrils. After mentally replaying the conversation I had with the bagger (Bagger: “How are you?” Me: “Doing really great, thanks!” Bagger: “Really great, huh?” Me: “Yes, really, really great!”), I realized that his first guess about the identity of the powder around my nose would probably not have been honeysuckle pollen.

Magical Uses

Activating Intuition

Author Scott Cunningham recommends inhaling the scent of honeysuckle to allow your intuitive faculties to take over your everyday linear-thinking mind. This goes along with honeysuckle’s overriding objectives, which are to get things moving, to help us release what may be holding us back, and to connect us with our healthiest and most divine flow, because tuning in to our intuition is simply tuning in to the eternal flow of the Divine Mind, with which we are already one. Honeysuckle also helps with this because she has such an earthy, sensual scent while also being connected to the Water and Air elements. This elemental makeup lends itself to helping us connect our day-to-day reality (Earth) with the invisible realm (Water, Air), which in turn connects us with our all-knowingness and endless supply of divine wisdom.

Awakening Sexuality and Releasing Sexual Blocks

Let’s face it: in our culture, having a healthy relationship with our sexuality can often be a challenge. Between fear-based religious upbringings, Photoshopped magazine ideals, and over-the-top literary and cinematic love scenes, the imaginary burden of what we “should” or “shouldn’t” be or do or look like can become contradictory, overwhelming, and altogether unmanageable. Not only that, but many of us have had past sexual experiences with which we associate shame or other types of pain.

The good news? Honeysuckle can help from a number of angles. First of all, her sweet and earthy scent can bring us into our bodies and connect us with our sensuality. Second, because she’s an expert at helping us let go of everything that doesn’t serve us, she naturally ushers those overwhelming fears, ideals, expectations, and old hurts right out the door of our consciousness. And third, her climbing, intertwining growing pattern lends itself to that natural intermingling of hearts, minds, and bodies that characterizes all sweet, passionate, and mutually trusting sexual encounters.

To release sexual blocks and help heal and awaken your sexuality, try taking the essence or spending time with the flowers. You might also perform a ritual involving inhaling the scent of fresh honeysuckle.

RITUAL TO RELEASE SEXUAL BLOCKS AND HEAL SEXUALITY

For this ritual, you will want to have one or more blossoming honeysuckle plants nearby. At the full moon, before bedtime, pour a small glass of blessed water around the roots of the plant and gently and lovingly pick two blossoms. Place the blossoms next to the place where you sleep, and get ready for bed. Turn off all the lights, then light an off-white, unscented soy candle next to your bed. Sit on or in your bed and hold the blossoms in both hands. Close your eyes and take some deep breaths while consciously relaxing your body. When you feel ready, inhale the scent of the blossoms. Fill your mind, body, and spirit with nothing but an awareness of the scent and the blossoms, then say: “I love myself just as I am.” Continue to inhale for a few more breaths, then say: “I love my body just as it is.” Continue to inhale and relax for a few more moments, and then say:

I forgive, I release, I renew. I come into the present.

I accept and flow with my desires. I am blessed, I am perfect, I am beautiful. I am safe, and all is well.

Now gently crush and rub the blossoms on your inner wrists, belly, and heart. (If you have sensitive skin, just lightly brush yourself with the blossoms in these places.) Place the blossoms under your pillow. Extinguish the candle and go to sleep. Repeat every night until the next new moon.

Good Luck

It’s said that honeysuckle growing near your home will bring good luck. Of course it must be true, because good luck is the natural state of things, and honeysuckle helps bring everything into its natural state by releasing fear-, ego-, and illusion-based blocks to this natural flow.

Letting Go/Endings and Beginnings

Although everything is changing, and change is the natural state of things, change can sometimes feel unsettling, scary, or sad. While changes such as breakups or losing one’s job can naturally leave us feeling bereft, even moving to a home that we like a lot better than the old one can bring about a considerable amount of stress.

Honeysuckle can help us realize that even seemingly undesirable changes can actually be blessings in disguise or even portals into the endless flow of divine blessings that’s constantly doing its best to get through to us. After all, helping us tap into this flow with courage and calm is honeysuckle’s special gift.

For this reason, taking honeysuckle essence or having a plant close to the home can help us during times such as the following:

✵ moving or major residence-related shifts

✵ traveling (or just being out of the day-to-day environment)

✵ starting a new school or school year

✵ starting or ending a new job

✵ job changes

✵ starting or ending a relationship

✵ the death of a loved one

✵ clutter clearing or releasing old keepsakes and memorabilia

Also, according to physician and father of flower essence healing Edward Bach, honey- suckle can help support those who cling to an idealized version of the past in ways that hamper them from enjoying the present.

If, as author Judika Illes suggests in The Element Encylopedia of 5000 Spells, surrounding oneself in honeysuckle can increase longevity, perhaps we owe that to her ability to help us change with the times: inner flexibility and openness to change is a quality of youthfulness and resilience, just as a nimble branch can bend with the wind while a stiff and brittle one will often break.

Prosperity

If you’ve read the previous information about honeysuckle, you’ve no doubt figured out that honeysuckle has to do with divine and energetic flow. Like the word fluid, the word affluence is derived from the Latin word that means “to flow.” It’s no wonder, then, that one of honeysuckle’s most traditional magical uses is to help activate prosperity and abundance and get those finances flowing!

And, as mentioned above, honeysuckle’s elemental makeup also lends itself to prosperity—i.e., Earth (the material world) and Water and Air (the invisible divine flow that animates and nourishes everything). As you may have guessed, it can be especially helpful for those of us who feel there may be some sort of block to our natural flow of abundance. To experience these benefits, try working with honeysuckle in any of the ways mentioned in the above sections, or make and carry a charm such as the following.

ABUNDANCE CHARM

When the moon is full, place three fresh honeysuckle blossoms on a small piece of green or purple cotton. Add a shiny silver dollar, five shiny pennies, a citrine quartz crystal (all washed in salt water and saged), five allspice cloves, and a pinch of cinnamon. Tie closed with a piece of hemp twine. Keep it near you until your finances are flowing comfortably, then bury it near the base of a tree.

Weight Loss

Everything is connected: inner/outer, form/spirit, body/mind. As such, releasing old “stuff” from our minds and emotions can help us release extra weight on our bodies. As a matter of fact, the previous ritual to release sexual blocks will work just as well for weight loss. You can also try taking the essence regularly, especially during the waning moon cycle.

Magical Correspondences

Elements: Earth, Water, Air

Gender: Female

Planet: Jupiter