Black Hills

This Essence speaks to our souls of our pure source and being. It is Grandmother Earth’s wake up call, a gift returning us to ourselves

A Green Hope friend from Deadwood, South Dakota sent me a box of Flowers and other cherished offerings she had gathered in the Black Hills. When I opened the box, my circuits were blown by the power of what she had gathered. I decided to make an Essence from this offering and then see what I was to do with it. First things first, I thank you Suzy for your journeying into the Black Hills to make this possible.

My father grew up in nearby Rapid City, and his parents helped create the Native American museum there. The Black Hills were his favorite place, and he had many stories of his childhood there. But my reaction to the Flowers was a different sense of recognition than a familial one. It went beyond the personal to the universal.

So much of what I know about Flowers comes from a body experience beyond words or beliefs. For many decades I have been trying to translate the vibration of Flowers into descriptions that suggest their gifts enough for you to want to work with their vibrations. Words can never contain the truth and vibration of a Flower and its Essence, but they can suggest the territory, sometimes, if I am lucky. That Flower Essences are beyond language is a wonderful thing, but it also leads me to not always know how to navigate cultural shifts in my descriptions. Flowers don’t speak from a place of culture but more from source. As the translator, I am the one making the mistakes! Please accept my heartfelt apologies for anything I say that feels wrong. The missteps are all mine and not the Flowers.

My experience of this Essence is that it calls all humankind back to the purity of our creation and the first breath. The Black Hills is a place from which Grandmother Earth breathes in infinite significance. May we honor this place by being worthy of her love.

This Essence, like all Flower Essences, comes from a place beyond language, bearing a significance beyond understanding (my understanding, anyways!). In particular this Black Hills Essence holds something of a place held sacred by its guardians as the heart of everything. I would very much like to go to the Black Hills to honor them. In the meantime, I am so grateful for the opportunity to work with a refracted piece of their wisdom in the form of this Flower Essence.

My experience of this Essence is that it helps us to dissolve the chains of separation so that we can experience the pure source of our being. Soul retrieval might be one way to describe its purpose. This pure source is the oneness now calling us back from division to remembered union. This Essence has made me burst into tears of gratitude and love- repeatedly- I have no explanation for this, but I am grateful. It has helped me find something essential of myself which I thought lost.

I will close with grateful thanks to the people of the Arikara, Pawnee, Crow, Lakota, Cheyenne, Omaha, Arapaho, Kiowa, Kiowa-Apache and other tribes who have been threshold guardians of the Black Hills. May we all be worthy of your sacrifice.