a month with calendula
Marigold — growing up the film Hans Christian Anderson was on the TV — a story that weaves its only fairy tale tangentially around a life. What I remembered from the film was the ‘ Inchworm’ song, a critique of a busy business mind always measuring and quantifying rather than observing and immersing in the beauty of this Sun-sign flower:
Inchworm, inchworm (Two and two are four)
Measuring the marigold (Four and four are eight)
You and your arithmetic (Eight and eight are sixteen)
You’ll probably go far (Sixteen and sixteen are thirty-two)
Go far but not deep
Inchworm, inchworm (Two and two are four)
Measuring the marigold (Four and four are eight)
Seems to me you’d stop and see (Eight and eight are sixteen)
How beautiful they are (Sixteen and sixteen are thirty-two)
Stop and see… how beautiful…
Imagine the world we’d live in if our species did more stopping to see the beauty and less commodifying.
I have spent the last month with marigold, much of it rural Ireland at a friend’s cottage where time moves like syrup.
Time and calendula — her name comes from the same root as calendar because she blooms through the ‘calends of every month’. Calends are the Roman division of the years into months and the word also gives rise to the Latin calendarium ‘account book’, (back to our busy inchworm), but the root is calare — to call out, as the priests did to proclaim the new moon to mark each calend. She is a herb of the sun with a link to the moon, a herb for the Summer Solstice and for all months.
And if she moves across time, she moves also across a wide range of remedies. She is helpful in both acute and chronic conditions and is one of the most harmonising of digestives.
In herbal terms she’s known as an alterative — a plant who opens things up and moves things out — in calendula’s case, especially from damp, cold, stuck digestion or lymph. Her affinity with the lymph is powerful, swollen lymph nodes and areas of swelling love her and she is lovely after an infection to move out any lingering congestion.
She is a vulnery herb extraordinaire, especially for wounds that are inflamed or have pus, where she penetrates deeply, again moving lymph to clean and clear without causing cold. And as a modulator of inflammation, she allows the body’s processes to work while restoring balance, particularly in the digestive tract and other mucosa, including skin.
Calendula has an affinity with the female reproductive system (as well as the lymph, digestion, skin, liver and gallbladder). In particular, she’s an emmenagogue, moving stagnant and stuck periods (just as she moves lymph) to relieve pain. She’s a warming herb which also adds to this movement and pain relief.
She is not an immunostimulant, but she does act as a gentle tonic for the immune system, halting the spread of infections, acting on the lymph and safe for autoimmune conditions. She’s also a liver tonic, not as pushy as some bitters, as she has both bitter and sweet qualities, but she will stimulate bile to aid digestion, pushing the vital force downward and outward to clear a damp, cold, sluggish digestion and aid digestive fire.
In this sense, calendula is drying, like all bitters, but her ability to dry or moisten is also complex. Although she is constitutionally drying by moving stuck, cold dampness in particular tissues, she is a plant that holds a great deal of moisture. And it’s her mucilaginous aspect that enables her to sooth and moisten inflamed mucous membranes.
Calendula is one of my go-to herbs. In both the winter and winter-spring protocols that I use each day to respond to the rhythms of lupus, she features in my daily tincture. There’s something counter-intuitive in this, which illustrates why we have to chase down root causes of conditions and fluctuations in any bodily terrain. Although lupus is a condition that involves serial inflammatory flares my system at core is not hot, but cold. The lymph congeals easily, the digestive fire is sluggish and lax, the heat of inflammation is not constitutional, but a chain reaction. First there is a cold, depressed tissue (not psychologically, but physically) and the vital force, the inner fire weakens and fickers. This causes a reflex of inflammation as the body tries to stimulate the tissue and ignite what the Druid tradition would call Nwyfre — our inner energy and vital principle.
Calendula is the perfect herb when the body’s heat is actually generated by cold. In other conditions (lung and kidney inflammation for example), other herbs would work more appropriately with tissues that are stuggling with heat from fire.
Another counterintuitive aspect is that my constitution is, overall, dry. I don’t respond well to strong bitters or pushy alteratives that are drying, but herbs are marvellously intelligent. She knows her affinities — my digestion is not dry, my inflammation often arises from core cold stagnation. Calendula finds these damp, soggy pockets and her bitterness is light, solar and all about movement, so in combination with other herbs (often moistening) she works wonderfully. And she also has her own subtle moistening actions through moving circulation and lymph or used externally. Herbs, like people, are not easy to pigeonhole.
Her story is of lightness — just looking at her sunny face with its dazzling rays of petals lightens the spirit. A story of movement and gentle warmth — a walk on a Mediterranean beach on a morning in June. She’s a gorgeous herb for anyone who suffers with Seasonal Affective Disorder, bringing sun into the winter. And her herbal sunshine is a tonic in cold, damp, cloudy months, dispelling melancholy as well as keeping fluids moving.
In the summer she is woven into garlands to celebrate Beltane and the Summer Solstice, celebrating the light. Across European folklore she was hung on doors and in houses as a protector and used in love divinations, especially in Scotland where she is known as ‘marygold’. She’s also been found at gravesites across millennia. In Druidic tradition she moves vital energy, Nwyfre, and her solar opening is inspirational, resonating with Awen.
Open afresh your round of starry folds,
Ye ardent marigolds!
John Keats writes in ‘I Stood Tiptoe Upon a Little Hill’ — the epitome of Awen or inspiration from meditating on the beauty of the animate world and its ability to awaken joy and imagination in us.
As well as taking calendula daily as part of a regular tincture, I use a calendula balm on an ankle where the lymph is loathe to move. And this month I’ve also spent time each day with a calendula flower essence — an incredibly mild preparation more about the energetics of the plant than medicinal.
The ‘Inchworm’ song played in my head. Imagine the world we’d live in if our species did more stopping to see the beauty and less commodifying — a world where we listen to our plant allies with the kind of attention that is as intense as prayer.
Ah, if only we as a species, especially in the West, especially in non-indigenous societies, especially white elites driven by consuming and destroying… had been pausing to drink in beauty and inspiration, to nourish vitality that is not about exploitation and busyness.
Over and over, our herbal allies offer us a different story.
Finding your allies
Each month I meet with a small group of amazing women who are exploring their allies Along the Herbal Path.
We dive deep into an aspect of these companions in the animate world. Sometimes we pause to write, to centre ourselves in quiet meditation. Always we ask questions and make space for one another.
Together with the herbs, we create a little alchemy.
I’d love you to join us. Find out more, including how to join, on the triskelewell page