Many people find that they are strongly attracted to certain plants. These plants feel like friends to them and often these are the plants they’ll turn to (or can turn to) when they have a need to be filled. These are plant allies.
One of my favorite plant allies is garden sage (Salvia officinalis). It is strong and hardy, and nothing seems to faze it.
Its leaves are grey-green which I find soothing and deeply satisfying. Some of the leaves look leathery and are textured like the surface of your tongue. The leaves and leaf-stem are faintly velvety when new.
Sage has a pungent scent when fresh, and also when the dry leaves are burned for purifying rituals.
I’ve observed how it grows–even branches that seem to be dead will put out leaves and continue to live.
If a stem is left touching the ground it will eventually take root. Cut off the end of a leafy twig or branch, and it will soon grow more.
A sage twig came off of one of the plants I was transplanting, and I stuck it in some soil.
A few weeks later, its green leaves telling me it was still alive, I dug it up with its fledgling roots to put in the garden.
With leaves from one of my sage plants I made a wreath: wired bunches of fresh sage onto a grapevine base and left it lying flat so that the leaves wouldn’t all droop towards the floor. The leaves dried into wonderful forms, twisting and turning and becoming a deeper shade of sage greeny-grey. It is exquisite, and stands alone as an art object.
One of the reasons that I like sage so much is that it is used for purification and protection. I feel, when I have sage in the house, that simply by its presence there it is providing spiritual protection.
My sage wreath especially seems to be blessing my house by being in it.
Sage is also an ingredient in the dream pillows I make that are intended for lucid dreaming and trance-work. And it is one of my spirit allies.
February 2004