A Plant Ally for Winter Solstice

Who are you spending time with right now? 

My guess is that you've been seeing friends and family as the holidays gear up, and that the friends-and-family time will be increasing over the next week. 

In addition to all those lovely people, who, herbally-speaking, are you spending time with? Which plant allies are making their way into your bevs and treats?

Personally, I feel extremely drawn to cacao, peppermint, and orange at this time of the year. They make their way into nearly every December day for me. 

And there's another, well-known and rightly-lauded herbal ally who sweeps us into her orbit at the first crisp of autumn and holds us in her grasp until springtime: cinnamon. 

Cinnamon is perhaps the most famous herb of the holiday season, and I bet you're spending a lot of time with her already. So I'd like to invite you into the witchier side of cinnamon and offer some ideas for working energetically with this extraordinary ally.

Cinnamon as a Plant Ally

Cinnamon is the inner bark of a variety of trees in the Cinnamomum genus. It is a spice that can be sustainably harvested and easily dried and transported. 

Cinnamon is known in the herbal community as a fragrant herb that stimulates blood flow, particularly to the pelvic region, which often lands her a spot in Aphrodisiac blends and heart health tinctures. 

Cinnamon is fragrant and flavorful, and that is where so much of her magic lies. One of the functions of fragrance and flavor it that it at once pulls us outward-of-ourselves while grounding us in the present moment (much like sex does). This is extremely helpful for magic or spiritual practice -- we need to be in both an expansive and grounded state to make potent magic. 

But cinnamon's fragrance has a different quality than the expansion-grounding combo:

Cinnamon draws us into ourselves. Cinnamon brings us home. 

Cinnamon, more than any other herb, has the ability to pull us inward, down to our root chakras, down to the bedrock of our lives. Cinnamon is a time capsule that flips back the pages of memories, through Sunday brunch at a diner in college, through cinnamon-sugar toast of childhood summers, all the way back to the proverbial cookie baking with grandma. 

It would be easy to posit that cinnamon invokes these sensations of inwardness and memory because cinnamon is so pervasive throughout the coziness experiences of life, but I think it's more than that. 

I think that there are uniquely cinnamon qualities that direct our energies to the place within ourselves that feels most at home, the place where we feel most safe, most loved, and most taken care of. 

I think that it's because of these qualities that cinnamon has made its way into the hearthfires of our hearts -- cinnamon brings our hearts home, and so we welcome cinnamon into our kitchens, our memories, and our stories. 

As you move through Solstice Season, cinnamon can be your closest ally. 

If you struggle with feelings of belonging and harmony within your family, cinnamon can help you remember that your truest home lies both within yourself and on this earth, and that there is a pantheon of plant spirits holding you and encouraging you.

If you struggle with feelings of sadness and nostalgia, cinnamon can help you recall the joys of the past while encouraging you to create new pleasures when you're ready. 

If you are looking to add the extra zest of magic into your Solstice celebration, cinnamon is all there for you, jumping fully into any project you throw her way. 

This Solstice Season, allow Cinnamon to bring you home. 

I'd love to know who your Plant Allies are right now! Leave a comment below.

And if you'd like to read more about the magical side of herbs and how to work with their energies this Solstice season, check out the online class The Inward Spiral: Potions & Practices for Winter Solstice Season.  It's filled with all sorts of Solstice magic.