As summer continues her glorious ascent at the summer solstice, the showy flowers of hawthorn and elder in the hedgerows fade and begin to form their fruits for Lughnasa.
We now begin to look down again, curious to what is blooming at our feet: rose and poppy take up the show. Agrimony and valerian dot the roadways. Meadowsweet and ox-eye daisies join buttercups in the meadows.
Lady’s mantle is a herb that grows wild in the moors of Connemara and tucked into the limestone pavers of the Burren, and maybe in your garden. Now is her time for blooming. If you visit Brigit’s Garden you will see her chartreuse blossoms in the Samhain garden, held up by the distinctive round scalloped leaves, resembling a cloak or a mantle or a lion’s foot, which is a folk name for this member of the rose family.
You will notice Lady’s mantle for the large drops of dew-like moisture that collect in her leaves, shimmering like diamonds, reflecting the world (seen and perhaps unseen) around her. In the Irish tradition, dew is considered a liminal element: neither rain nor river, neither stream nor sea. Liminal times, like dusk, dawn and Samhain, and liminal places like holy wells and sacred sites, are considered places of in-between, places and times where the veil between our world and the Otherworld are most permeable and thus when magic is close at hand. Dew, in its liminality, and especially the dew collected in the Lady’s mantle fold, is said to have alchemical properties, and her botanical name affirms this potentiality: Alchemilla vulgaris. According to Niall Mac Coitir in his book Ireland’s Wild Plants, medieval alchemists would collect this dew at dawn and “used it in their experiments to turn base metals into gold.”
Today, we can receive the alchemical and liminal properties by drinking the dew directly from Lady’s mantle leaves and receive the essence of the herb, the purest form of a flower remedy. Drink the dew! Enliven your spirit by receiving this liminal element, held in the mantle of the leaves and encouraging connection to ancient rhythms and the living earth.
Lady’s mantle was one of the favourite herbs of Brigit, Irish goddess and saint. To this day, Lady’s mantle holds an important place in the Irish materia medica. Her leaves and flowers can be brewed into a delicious tea to honour the life cycles of women’s reproduction: to tonify the womb to encourage fertility and to regulate menstrual bleeding. Lady’s mantle is also a wound-healing herb and the tea can be used as a wash to promote healing and reduce inflammation.
Because of her tonifying and astringent properties, infusing her leaves and flowers in a carrier oil like olive oil, then massaging the oil onto the face or the body, can encourage and promote elasticity and a beautifying and, yes, magical glow to the skin!
By Tonja Reichley, Herbalist, Ritualist, Author
www.dancingwiththewild.com