Achillea millefolium COMPOSITAE
It is fitting that I finish my list of herbs with yarrow. It seems to me to typify the silent strength possessed by herbs in the healing of many ills, pulling the warmth of the sun and the welcome rain down into the soil to change by Nature’s alchemy into natural minerals, vitamins and oils in the service of man. I stand beside my yarrow clump with a feeling almost of awe. The “sacred herb” of some of the earliest cultures of man, unchanged for thousands of years, grows in my garden with the same properties now as it had then. The Druids used yarrow stems to divine the weather for each coming season, and according to the ancient writings, their predictions were more accurate than those of our satellite pictures of today. Yarrow was one of the nine Anglo-Saxon sacred herbs, used in rituals and for protection from evil. Knowledge of the plant’s strengths rather than superstition or magic must have been the basis of this ritual. Yarrow tea can be taken to relieve all bodily weaknesses caused by infectious diseases like colds and flu, or any prolonged debilitating illness. It is very often mixed with other herbs to strengthen the mixture and speed up its work. What more logical, then, than to say that yarrow wards off the “evil” of illness, which was always attributed then to unknown occult powers?
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