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Plant for Protection: Wildfire Support and Resources

Jan 15, 2025
by
Marketing FM
Plant for Protection: Wildfire Support and Resources

Ok, 2025. So far, you’re scary. No doubt about it. 

Fat and the Moon is in northern California, watching with horror, and so much sadness at what is happening to our friends in LA. People’s lives, neighborhoods of lives, up in flames, and a staggering amount of destruction.

The feeling of overwhelm leading into 2025 just got supercharged- a wave turned into a tsunami. 

Breath. 

Let’s take a sip of air right before the moment the overwhelm crystallizes into paralysis. 

Ok, we are here. We are reading these words. 

When we are able to take a beat, and find our center, we are better able to see and listen- literally. Shutdown shields our receptivity. 

If we are able to look more deeply into what’s happening in LA, we also get views into sublime beauty: people showing up for each other, the community net, the resilience and care that crisis also ignites in us.

Let’s keep our eye on those generative networks. We give power where we give our attention. That is magic.

Our intentions, when aligned with the energies of the world around us, can be magnified. This is the approach we take to Plant Magic. In constitutional medicine practices from around the world, the plant and the person is looked at through their energetics. Cold, damp, hot, dry, stagnant, stimulating, etc. These energetics get matched up to treat dysfunction, and to promote health. 

The chemistry of plants coaxes the systems of our bodies back to balance.

Plants for Protection.

Humans have depended on the protective powers of plants as much as we have depended on them for medicine, food, shelter, fiber and fuel. 

In folk practices around the world, protection plants are often medicinal plants.

In Slovenia, juniper, St John’s Wort, garlic, plantain, cannabis, and rosemary were traditionally used to protect against lighting, flood, fire, hail, curses and the evil eye. The ways in which these plants protect from these external forces is often related to their medicinal properties. 

Protection, repair, healing, resilience exist on a spectrum, and the plants know this on a cellular level; this is how they have survived without the ability to run a way for millions and millions of years.

 

PROTECTOR PLANTS

The plants offer us protection because they offer us alternative ways of being. Ultimately, the best way we protect ourselves is to protect each other and our environment. The plants show us how to creatively thrive in all ecosystems, how to be symbiotic, how to get our power from the sun and how to regenerate.

St John’s Wort

ST JOHN'S WORT

Protective medicine:

Aligns with the powers of the sun. Solar radiance is bright, hot, generative, and illuminating. In Slovenian folk medicine, St. John’s Wort is associated with Kres, and Kresnik, the summer solstice and the solar god. The most magically potent time to harvest St. John’s Wort is on the summer solstice.

Slovenians made wreaths of the plant and hung them on doorways and barns to protect from lighting, fire and around the necks of their cows, and other farm animals to protect them from bad fortune, or the evil eye.

Medicinal properties:
St. John’s Wort soothes burns, repairs skin and nerve tissue. This plant is indicated for depression that arises from a rupture.

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RUE

RUE

Protective medicine:

Ward to keep away opportunistic and parasitic entities. Averts and deflects negative energies by creating an inhospitable environment for these energies to thrive.For this reason, rue is a common plant outside of doorways in Oaxaca, Mexico.

Medicinal properties:
Powerful antiparasitic and antifungal, often used in baths in Slovenian folk medicine for this purpose. Not to be used internally.

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ELDERBERRY

ELDERBERRY

Protective properties:

In Slovenian folk tradition, elder trees were thought to house the spirits of the ancestors. Elder trees were places to connect with, and receive guidance from, those that came before you. Women, eager for husbands, would go to the elder tree and shake it- asking for a husband that was, ‘not too young and not too old’.

Medicinal properties:
The elderberry and elderflower have been used in teas, syrups, and candies to bolster the immune system- our body’s internal (and inherited) protective system. Elderberry is best when taken to avoid getting sick, rather than when you are already sick. Its medicine acts as a protective barrier.

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PLANTS FOR PROTECTION HERBAL LIVE

Sending protection, repair, resilience, and regeneration to you all, especially to those affected by the LA fires. We love you deep, LA.

For more on this subject, check out our Plant for Protection Herbal Live below, where Rachel discusses this topic more!

RELIEF EFFORT AND RESOURCES

For those looking to support the efforts in LA, here are a few resources:

MUTUAL AID LA

Mutual Aid LA Network is a connector and information hub for mutual aid efforts in Los Angeles. Check out their robust Fire Resource List.

THE SIDEWALK PROJECT

The Sidewalk Project does street outreach serving unhoused and vulnerable people in LA. Their volunteer team has been working 24/7 responding to the overlooked needs of LA’s homeless population who have been getting turned away from shelters.

GLOBAL GIVING

Global Giving is a trusted foundation that raises money during disasters, and then quickly regrants to grassroots / local organizations all over the world. They do an exceptional job of funding at the acute moment of a disaster, and maintaining support over time.

9Thirtyla evacuation shelter

9ThirtyLA Evacuation Center for individual and families affected by fire displacement. Also serving as a donation pick up location for needed essentials.

GO FUND ME WILDLIFE RELIEF FUND

The Go Fund Me Wildfire Relief Fund is a 501c3 nonprofit arm of Go Fund Me that redistributes their funds to individual Go Fund Me campaigns with less access to donor networks.

Suay Sew Shop

Suay Sew Shop is mobilizing to take on the unwanted overflow of unwanted textile donations through their Suay is Forward program. Divert excess textiles from landfills! Stains, holes, rips okay.

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