A Time Is Coming - A Quotation from St. Anthony

I think that perhaps that time has already arrived.

Saint Anthony the Great

(251-356 AD)

Saint Anthony (or Antony) the Great, "star of the wilderness" and "father of all Christian monks," is a greatly beloved figure of the ancient Christian world. Though he was certainly not the first Christian to leave the cities for a life of solitude in more remote areas, Antony stands prominently as the hugely popular father of the important Desert Father-Mother movement in upper Egypt. The movement soon spread this eremetic (hermit) and cenobitic (communal monastic) form of deeply meditative, very austere, and psychologically rigorous Christian spirituality over to Palestine, Syria, Greece and beyond. Not long afterwards, the movement crossed the Mediterranean sea to Italy and thence to much of Europe.

White Pine Medicine Home Remedies

White Pine Medicine

Milk & Honey Herbs Blog,   22 January 2018

White Pine (Pinus strobus) is one of my first and dearest plant allies, and extremely abundant here in the Northeast. My hope is that the monograph on it below will encourage you all to get to know this fantastic bioregional herb and incorporate it into your herbal repertoire! Read on for a full description of this plant, harvest methods, medicinal uses and a recipe for White Pine Cough Syrup. Enjoy!

Eastern White Pine (Pinus strobus)
Family Pinaceae

Part Used:  Needles, Resin/ Sap/ Pitch, Inner Bark. I prefer to work with the needles and thin twigs together, as pictured
Habitat:  Very widespread in Massachusetts and New England.  Woodlands, forest edges, yards, parks, old meadows. Found all along the Eastern seaboard from New Brunswick to northern Georgia, east to the Great Lakes region and Appalachians.
Cultivation:  No need to cultivate this one- it’s very abundant!
Description: An evergreen and the tallest tree in the Northeast, they can reach at least 180ft in height.  Their long, slender needles (2-5 inches long) grow in bundles of 5 needles....a good mnemonic device for ID is there are 5 letters in the word "white" and 5 needles per bundle. They grow pine cones that can be quite large-4-7 inches long- and are often covered in resin.   Bark is light brown and heavily grooved in older specimens and smooth and brownish-grey in younger trees.  They commonly reach 200 years in age and can grow to be over 450 years old.
Herbal Ecology:  White pines are the characteristic “old field” species in New England and are known to form even-aged stands in open areas that are left to return to forest.  If you see an even-aged stand of white pine there is a good chance that in the distant past that area used to be pasture- a neat plant for “reading the landscape”.  It is tolerant of virtually every soil type in New England from wet and boggy to dry and sandy, and frequently establishes itself after all manner of disturbance.  The older trees are moderately fire resistant due to their thick bark.
Collection:  The needles can be collected anytime they are green, which is pretty much all year, including winter.  In the fall they do lose some needles- some turn yellow and fall, while others stay green and intact- it is best to wait until after this fall shedding to collect. The needles, as well as thin twigs may be harvested together (see pic above). Harvest the tips of the branches. Even better, collect dropped branches from the forest floor after a storm for the most sustainable harvest.
Taste: slightly Sweet, slightly Bitter, Sour (needles)
Energetics:  Warm, Dry
Constituents:  Vit C (needles), many different acids in needles, essential oils (including terpenes, monoterpenes, sesqueterpenes), resin, starch (and more....)
Herbal Actions:  Expectorant, circulatory stimulant, mild diuretic, pectoral, immune stimulant

Medicinal Uses:  Specific for respiratory and bronchial complaints, especially when wet and cold in nature.  A tea of the needles, or the needles with thin twigs included, is helpful to promote expectoration and removal and thinning of mucous from the lungs. Use for coughs, colds, bronchitis, laryngitis, croup.  Warning- White Pine can be quite stimulating to coughs, so if the cough is dry and spasming in nature it can exacerbate these symptoms. It's best in this case to combine with more moistening and/or anti-spasmodic herbs in this case (see White Pine Cough Syrup recipe below for a balanced recipe). The needles are widely known to be extremely high in Vitamin C and are a great addition to a tea for the common cold or as a winter immunity tea.  Once used to treat scurvy!  They are actually reported to be 5x as high as oranges, per volume, in Vitamin C! A deficiency of Vitamin C can also negatively impact the adrenals, as well as the integrity of tissues in the body, and one way I've worked with White Pine in my practice is as a bioregionally abundant and inexpensive source of Vitamin C, especially when combined with Rose Hips. Our locally bioregional species of Rose in Rosa multiflora. Of course Vitamin C is heat sensitive, but it is so abundant in both these plants that steeping in hot water as a tea still provides a great source of this vitamin.  The needles and twigs also make for a fabulous steam for congestion in the lungs.  The inner bark is the part that was offical to the Electics (the Herbal doctors of the late 1800's and early 1900's). and is very useful as an expectorant as well and can be decocted and sweetened with honey- best used after the infectious, feverish stage of a sickness has passed.  An old Eclectic recipe from Squibbs Materia Medica c. 1906 for a cough syrup combines the inner bark of White Pine with wild cherry bark (Prunus serotina), Spikenard Rt (Aralia racemosa), Balm of Gilead buds (Populus sp including Aspen and Cottonwood), Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) , Sassafrass Rt (Sassafrass albidum) and chloroform and morphine sulfate! The pea-sized piece of the pitch can also be chewed to promote expectoration.  It is also a gently warming circulatory stimulant and I love making bath salts with white pine for a warming winter bath, and also for general aches and pains. It is invigorating and enlivening in nature, and the ample essential oils are quite immune-activating too. You can add oil to the bath salts to make it into a salt scrub, which can be very immune-boosting, as it stimulates lymph flow.  To support you lymph, take a palm-sized amount of the scrub and always massage towards the heart. Salt is of course quite detoxifying too. And the oil moistens our skin- our biggest organ of elimination and the biggest protector of our body- so giving it some medicinal, non-toxic love is always a good thing too! The sap has a whole host of topical applications including splinters, sores, boils, sore muscles and rheumatism, cuts and swellings and is sometimes mixed with butter or fat for this. To remove woody debris and bark from collected pitch, gently heat on low and strain. Sap dissolves readily into warmed oils to be added to salves. It contains “abietic resins” which stimulate topical circulation, inflammatory response  and the “foreign body response”- meaning pus and fluids will build up much more quickly on a wound that is dressed with pine pitch.  BUT the other side of the coin is that one moves through the healing process much faster and avoids infection.   It's quite important to note that the Eclectics learned of the medicinal properties of this North American plant from indigenous peoples, including the Algonquin, Chippewa, Ojibwe, and likely many more.

White Pine-infused Honey. Cut needles small and add to raw honey, warm lightly to infuse into the honey (do not heat to a boil), then put into a jar and let sit a few weeks. To use, eat by the teaspoon-full, or add to hot water for instant tea. May also be made simply by adding to raw honey (without heat) and letting infuse a few weeks. No need to strain the honey, use it with the needles still in the honey!

To read the entire article, please click on the link provided below:

Milk & Honey Herbs Blog

      

Can vs. Can't

An ability vs a physical, emotional, mental or environmental hindrance.  

Comparing Human Beings to Flowers and Fruit - The Wisdom of Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

Passion fruit flower Comparing Human Beings to Flowers and Fruit  "Human beings could be compared to flowers or fruit. When you have contact with them, you look at them, you talk to them, you listen to them, it is as if you were breathing them in, tasting them even, like food, but on a subtle plane but instead what do,  you do most of the time when you meet other people? You look at their clothes, their jewelry, their face, their hands, their legs, but you do not seek to nourish yourself in the subtle planes with all the life that is in front of you, hidden, emanating from their heart, from their soul and from their spirit. That is a pity. In the future, be more attentive and try to learn to recognize the human beings who carry this life. Stop and think to yourself, ‘Thank you heavenly Father, thank you heavenly Mother. Through these ‘flowers’ and ‘fruit’,  I now have the opportunity to come close to you and gaze upon you. Through this splendour,  I am able to breathe in your fragrance and taste your flavour.’  And you will go home happy because of all these fruit and flowers that you will have encountered." Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

We Come To A Fork In The Road - A Discouse by M.N. Hopkins

We come to a fork in the road.  One road leads to a new beginning for mankind, the other leads us to the same old dull, empty existence.  A choice arrives.  To take the high road of freedom and self determination or to continue down the familiar road of enslavement and mis-direction.

Now is a time of choice.   As, all time springs from the now of choosing.  We choose one way or another.  This has been written into the script.

Choose a life of self-reliance and self-determination or the hollow path of slavery mis-represented as freedom and democracy.  Two words misused to mis-direct you away from your God given ability to choose and create human community.

Instead of cooperation, we have coercion and extortion.  Threats and punishment for those who dare to live as God granted us upon this Earth.

Led by tyrants,  your property stolen,  your dignity stolen,  your acceptance of a fallen state and your cooperation in maintaining your own chains and terms of imprisonment.

Break free and be responsible for yourself and to your communities.  Do your part in creating a well maintained and thriving existence.  Build upon the past and create a new future, today.

Be slaves,  no more.  Be free men and women again as you were from the beginning and will be again at the end of time.

Accept not and agree not to this madness that has taken you over.  See clearly what you have become and what you can become again by simply using your God given ability to choose your course.  Left or right or straight ahead.

Be well and happy travels along your self-determined path.

© 2018  M.N. Hopkins

The Third Way - A Poem by M.N. Hopkins

The Third Way

Not of my way

Not of your way

But

A new way

A third way

Acceptable to both

Both put their own needs aside

Ageeing upon a way

A third way

Agreeable to both parties

A good way

A common way

A new way

A way accepted

And

Agreed upon by both

Ego needs set aside

Seeking a common good

Seeking

And

Establishing

Together

A third way

Yes

The third way

© 2018 M.N. Hopkins

Note: The inspiration came for this poem while thinking of how common it is for people to fight with each other in their little ego battles, each wanting it their own way and so engrossed in their own needs, thus never seeing that there are other ways of doing that may never have been considered by either party, yet by the choosing of a third way, these conflicts may cease to exist depending on the willingness of both parties to free their minds long enough to see that other possibilities or actions taken or not taken actually exist outside of their little belief systems or constructs.  I wrote it in a free verse style of poetry and published it for the first time on my blog today, the 15th of September 2018.

To read more of my poems, please click on the link below

Poems by M.N. Hopkins

The Spiritualist - The Wisdom of Omraam Mikheal Aivanhov

The Spiritualist - sticks to one philosophical system and goes into it more deeply

"Even when people decide to embark on the path of spirituality, many remain warped by this currently widespread habit of wanting to be informed about everything, to touch on every subject, and to be up to date on everything. And as there is no shortage of books on the religions, beliefs and practices of the whole world, their curiosity will never be satisfied. But that is not what spiritual life is about.

On the contrary, to accomplish true spiritual work, we must stick to one philosophy, one doctrine, and go into it more deeply. Otherwise, our psychic body will be subject to the same things as our physical body: if we absorb all kinds of disparate foods, we end up vomiting. Similarly, our psychic stomach can get indigestion from everything we try to make it swallow. So, if you really want to progress along a spiritual path, try to stick with one doctrine, which will serve as the framework for the inner temple you are building with the help of the new materials you bring in every day."

Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov