As we are coming towards the Autumn Equinox, I find myself coming full circle on a project I have done with my friend, Patrick over the course of the last year. We both follow the Wheel of the Year, astrologically, and based on the seasons of where we live, not so much in regards to festivals. We both enjoy using salts to sprinkle on sacred space when doing readings or workings and when I made the salts pictured in the middle for last years Autumn Cross Quarter, we decided we needed them for all of the seasons.
We would approach each seasons Equinox or Solstice or Cross Quarter as it started to come up with by looking at our keywords for the season and the astrological makeup of that time period. Using that, I would start with a base of salt, all kinds of salt, Himalayan pink salt, Irish grey salt, some Alder smoked salt and so forth, and add essential oils (usually a Top, Middle, Base notes), loose herbs or berries or nuts or seeds, and flower essence waters to correlate to the keywords and correspondences. I would let it all percolate in my Fire and Ice crystal henge and then package half of it off and send it to Patrick.
What we have ended up with are 8 salts that are really infused with the correspondent energy of its season to either use IN the season to celebrate it or to use when we just want to pull some of that energy into our space. But in truth I have ended up with far more than that. I’ve had a year long experience of blending essential oil notes, standing in front of huge shelves at the health food store of herbs and botanicals and pulling first intuitively and then checking why and how that might work with what I was trying to achieve. I have paid attention to texture, smell, color, energy and practice bringing those in balance so that the voice was cohesive. It really was a powerful experience that I wouldn’t trade.
Eventually, a turn or two of the year, I will have to do it all over again, and those salts might benefit from what I have learned through this and other crafting, but for now there is a sense of completion and achievement for someone who is generally more of a “get it done“ oriented then ”live it for a whole year” oriented person. There is value in walking the experience season by season rather than smashing out all 8 in a week and I hope that is a lesson that I hold onto.