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

Viola and Violet
The Flowers

See “Pansy.”

[contents]

Water Lily

The ancient Egyptians highly valued the alchemical properties of flowers and scents, and to them, the water lily was among the most magical of plants. While they referred to this particular flower as a lotus, according to author Scott Cunningham, “overwhelming evidence now indicates that the true lotus was unknown in Egypt until its fairly late introduction by the Persians. The flower that the Egyptians loved, treasured, and worshipped above all others was actually the water lily.”

Like the bright sunlight that illuminates the moon, water lily has a cool brightness and a soothing, nourishing, balancing, and deeply healing spiritual wisdom.

Magical Uses

Clarity of Desire and Direction

Because water lily can help align us with our true emotions and the beauty of our emotional flow, her vibration can help us discover our true desires and most ideal direction. She can also give us the insights and courage necessary to take effective steps toward manifesting our dreams.

Cooling Passions

I am a big proponent of passion. But if you find that you repeatedly make rash or unwise decisions because of passionate feelings like anger or desire, water lily can help calm your emotions and clear your mind so that you can make decisions with a more balanced internal landscape. To name a few examples, water lily can be helpful if…

✵ you’d like to begin to make healthier decisions when it comes to romantic partners and situations

✵ you’d like to interact with challenging people and situations in a calmer, wiser, and more effective manner

✵ you’d like to bring the whole atmosphere in your home or a certain area down a notch so that everyone is kinder and more respectful of one another

For the first two examples, I suggest taking the essence regularly. Or, for the first example, you might like to visit a blossoming water lily and have a heart to heart with her. For the third example, I suggest creating the following mist potion and misting the room or area daily or as needed.

WATER LILY “DOWN A NOTCH” MIST POTION

Add sixteen drops water lily essence to a mister of rose water, along with twenty drops lavender essential oil and ten drops neroli essential oil. Shake before misting. In addition to misting areas, you can employ this potion to lightly mist yourself or other people for a similar passion-cooling effect.

Creative Flow

We are like flames, rays, or sparkles of the one Divine Sun. The Divine Creator (God/dess) flows through us, animates us, and gives us form, so it follows that we are inherently creative. And when our creativity is flowing freely, we easily digest the process of life. In other words, when we encounter suffering of any kind, we have the capacity to transmute it into beauty and allow it to fuel our connection with others, ourselves, and the Divine.

Water lily helps us activate our natural creativity through helping us enter fully and bravely into our emotional flow. Once this happens, all we have to do is create the space for our creativity to flow through us. Our creative work feels like receiving divine dictation rather than struggling to prove our cleverness or demonstrate our skill.

CREATIVE JUICE

If you crave a deeper alignment with your natural creativity, you might like to drink this potion every morning until your creative juices are sufficiently flowing. Find or create a 100 percent juice blend containing blueberries. Fill a small juice or shot glass with it. Add a spray of rose water and six drops water lily essence. Hold it in both hands and visualize clear light with rainbow sparkles coming down from above, entering the crown of your head, moving down to your heart, through your arms, and out through the palms of your hands and into the juice. Say: “I am a clear channel of divine creativity.” Drink. (Please note: when emotions come up, even if they feel unpleasant, don’t suppress them or decide that they are indications that the potion isn’t working. Allow them. Explore them. Let them flow through you.)

Healing Depression

Our emotions are the river of our life experience. When they stop flowing, our life experience becomes stagnant and we begin to feel depressed. Water lily can help heal depression by opening up the flow and realigning us with the beauty of the full spectrum of our emotional landscape. For this purpose, you might take the essence regularly until the cloud of depression has lifted. Also, at least once a week, try misting yourself with rose water into which you’ve added twenty-two drops water lily essence, or take a forty minute (or longer) bath into which you’ve added one cup of sea salt and twenty-two drops water lily essence.

Additionally or instead, if you have access to a blossoming water lily that you can get close enough to smell, inhale the fragrance with the intention to realign with your most ideal emotional flow.

Heart Healing

What we call “having a broken heart” is actually a natural aspect of the human experience. At one time or another, because of death or some other form of ending, we all experience the loss of people and animals that we have deeply loved. And there is no way to get around the pain. In fact, the only way to get to the other side is to go straight through it. This is a specialty of water lily: she helps us open our heart to grief so that we can feel it fully and consequently begin to heal. She even helps us to see the beauty that resides within the pain.

This aspect of water lily’s magic brings to mind author Kahlil Gibran’s famous quote: “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”

If you can get close enough to a blossoming water lily to inhale its scent, do so with the intention to feel your grief fully and speed the healing of your heart. Alternatively, spend time gazing at the blossom or take the essence.

Purification

Water lily purifies the spirit by healing the heart and breaking down our defenses so that a clear stream of life-force energy flows through our being as a matter of course. Over time, this energy helps us let go of old hurts, limiting beliefs, harsh emotions, and anything else that may be holding us back from possessing a clear and positive self-image and sparkly-fresh state of mind.

Spiritual Nourishment

What is spiritual nourishment? It’s that feeling that we all crave: the feeling that we are a part of something bigger than our little egos, and the feeling that at the base of everything is the profound energy of pure and transcendent love. When we don’t feel spiritually nourished, we feel depressed and empty. We feel unsafe and unsettled. And we gravitate toward addictive behaviors to try filling the empty hole in our hearts.

To help yourself discover the spiritual nourishment that you crave, you might employ water lily in any of the ways suggested in this entry or as you feel guided.

Transmutation

Every challenge holds an important key for our spiritual unfolding. Sometimes when we encounter a particularly stubborn challenge, rather than working against it, the best way to magically deal with it is to work with it and gently transmute its negative aspects into positive ones. For example, say you’ve got a phobia or there’s a particularly challenging person in your life. And the more you resist the phobia or person, the worse the situation seems to get. You might try working with water lily’s energy to flow with the situation, rather than against it, so that you can begin to transmute the challenging energies associated with it. Taking the essence would be one way to facilitate this dynamic. Another way would be the following exercise.

TRANSMUTATION EXERCISE

Sit comfortably near a blossoming water lily. Relax and take some deep breaths. Connect with the water lily and silently request her help. Let her know that you’re going to send some energy her way and that you’d like her to transmute it into positivity and to help you see the blessings contained within the challenges. When you get the okay from the flower and when you feel ready, gently bring the situation to mind. Imagine it fully. Don’t fight it. Let it get really bad in your imagination, and feel all the feelings that go along with it to the very best of your ability. Feel this in your energy field as a glowing red light. Now send all that light into the center of the blossom. Feel all your resistance and unhappiness draining out of you and going straight into the center of the flower. Know that the flower is completely equipped to field this negativity and will even receive nourishment from it. It’s in her nature to see challenging energy as fuel for exuding her natural spiritual beauty. In your mind’s eye or with your feelings, notice all this unwanted energy shifting into something cool, nourishing, and useful. When this process feels complete, express your heartfelt thanks to the flower and feel her heartfelt thanks in return.

The water lily will almost definitely be willing to help. But if for any reason you don’t get the inner okay from the flower, just thank her and try again later.

Magical Correspondences

Element: Water

Gender: Female

Planets: Moon, Sun