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

Yarrow
The Flowers

Arevered and much-used ingredient in Western and Eastern magical traditions alike, the potent yarrow blossom is exceptionally useful for magic related to protection, healing, and banishing.

Magical Uses

Banishing and Exorcism

Just as Chinese medicine suggests employing yarrow essential oil to remove blocks and stimulate ideal chi (energy) flow throughout the body, the magic of the yarrow flower can help dissuade unwanted energetic patterns, conditions, or entities from lingering around a person or place so that energy is free to flow in the most harmonious possible way. Here are some suggestions for how to employ yarrow for banishment or exorcism:

✵ Bless and empower a bowl of dried yarrow in bright sunlight. Then sprinkle the herb around the perimeter of the outside of your home.

✵ Add yarrow essential oil to a mister of spring water, along with a clove of garlic cut into four pieces. Shake well and mist your space.

✵ Diffuse yarrow essential oil as an accompaniment to banishment or exorcism rituals.

✵ Add a pinch of dried yarrow to a metal salt and pepper shaker, along with a handful of dried beans and a clove of garlic cut into eight pieces. Close and use as a space-clearing rattle.

Divination

Although many of us flip three coins for the purpose nowadays, yarrow stalks were employed in some of the more traditional methods of I Ching divination. Additionally, author Scott Cunningham recommends drinking yarrow tea to strengthen one’s psychic abilities; inhaling or diffusing the essential oil or taking the essence can have a similar effect. Incidentally, because of yarrow’s fortifying and shielding dynamics, he can be an excellent flower to work with when you want to enhance your psychic powers while simultaneously fortifying your courage and shielding yourself from negative energy (two important concerns for sensitive intuitive folk everywhere).

Healing

Chiron, the legendary “wounded healer” in Greek mythology, reportedly taught Achilles to carry yarrow with him in battle to heal potential injuries (hence the first part of yarrow’s botanical name Achillea millefolium). Interestingly, Civil War soldiers followed Achilles’ lead, using the dried herb to help staunch blood flow. Even today, holistic healers employ yarrow (in herb or essential oil form) to treat a variety of issues, including wounds, menstrual conditions, colds, flu, fever, headaches, and circulation. To employ yarrow’s healing abilities, consult an herbal healer or herbal healing manual, diffuse the essential oil in your space to support physical healing, or work with the essence.

Releasing Negative Emotions

In the Victorian language of flowers, yarrow was given as a gift to help heal heartbreak. Interestingly, this is mirrored in the way that yarrow essential oil is sometimes employed by aromatherapists such as Gabriel Mojay, who writes in Aromatherapy for Healing the Spirit:

Yarrow’s “visionary” effect on an emotional level is one that helps those in depression release the bitterness of hidden rage; while in those who are habitually defensive and severe, it allows them to tap and relinquish their tears.

For help releasing negative emotions, spend time in quiet contemplation with yarrow blossoms and have a silent heart to heart about what you’d like help with. Or diffuse the essential oil in your space, add a pinch of dried yarrow or forty drops yarrow essence to your bath water, or take the essence as needed.

Protection

Some etymologists believe that the word yarrow comes from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning “to be ready” or “to prepare.” Considering yarrow’s extensive history as a protective talisman, this is not surprising. Indeed, many magical practitioners (myself included) consider his blossoms to be an old standby ingredient for all forms of protective magic. For example, you might try:

✵ creating a protective charm by empowering dried yarrow, a clove of garlic, and a white quartz crystal point in sunlight and tying them all into a piece of red cotton cloth

✵ hanging a pouch of yarrow on the outside of your front door and on any other door that borders to the outside

✵ adding ten drops yarrow essential oil to a small bottle of sunflower oil and lightly anointing yourself, another person, an object, or the outside of your doors and windows

Magical Correspondences

Element: Air

Gender: Male

Planet: Sun