Parting the Mists

Have a sweet day, everyone!

Heather – Luck, Celebration, and Community (also Alienation and Yearning to belong)

Meaning: Heather honey is so delicious that some beekeepers transport their hives to the moors each summer to harvest the flowers. Heather, like Clover, is considered to be highly auspicious and a bringer of good fortune. A major celebration may be imminent or the time may have come for you to start celebrating all that is best in your life. Heather symbolizes the power and the joy of community, and much of our pleasure and our pains result from living together. We spend much of our time thinking about the difficult aspects of relationships and of our life, to try to make sense of them. But try thinking about your life with a different focus. Spend some time dwelling on all the positive aspects of the people you know and have known. Then do the same for your family and community.

Choosing this card may also be indicative of the fact that you are becoming more aware of the communities you live in – at work, at home and spiritually. You may feel drawn to becoming more actively involved in them, or perhaps you are contemplating a change in your relationship toward them.

This card could also mean that even though you may be trying to get out of a situation, you are probably being driven by a yearning for a deeper sense of community. Choosing this card reversed may indicuatethat you feel you don’t belong – in your family, at work, or in your relationship. This feeling may be mild or severe, but behind it could be the urge to be part of a community or tribe, as well as a loving relationship, in a way that your current situation does not satisfy.

Rather than trying to get away from this feeling by leaving on e situation and jumping into another without much thought, Heather may be urger you to pause and explore more fully your feelings of alienation or not belonging to discover which aspect of your life you need to consider changing.

Plant Info: Heather is a hardy shrub indigenous to most of Europe and Asia Minor, and can grow in both wet and dry areas. Typically topping out and 18 inches tall, it grows on hills and mountains above where the trees will grow, and on open heaths, so named because they are covered in Heather.

The Picts were using Heather to many an alcoholic drink over four thousand years ago – as archeologists discovered on the Isle of Rhum, where a Neolithic shard was unearthed with traces of fermented beverage made with Heather Flowers. Heather beer was made in Scotland for centuries, drunk in the highlands from cattle horns, and in 1994 its commercial production was revived. In the past, Heather ale was popular in Wales and was drunk for its restorative powers.

Heather is associated with good luck, which could be because heather is associated with bees that are also associated with community and celebration. A heather pillow is said to give restful sleep, and adding its flower tips to hot water makes a refreshing tea or bath.

Druid Plant Oracle by Philip and Stephanie Carr-Gomm and artist Will Worthington