I made the mother essence of the Candelabra Lily (Brunsvigia orientalis) on 21st March 2024, which was a crisp Autumn Day in the energies of the Autumn Equinox. This day is also Human Right’s Day in South Africa which very much aligns with the essence of this flower. It was made just past Scarbrough outside the Cape Point reserve in Cape Town, South Africa where there had been a big fire that had burned the majority of the Fynbos the December before.
These beautiful flowers bloom between February and March, which is the end of Summer and beginning of Autumn. They are a perineal bulb, that can take 12 years to settle in the ground before they flower, they seem to bloom out of nowhere and continue to bloom every year thereafter. The Candelabra Lily says, all parts of you are sacred, allow me to support you while you retrieve the fragments of your soul and lineage and root deeper into our Mother.
The stories, signs and symbols relating to the Candelabra Lily Essence
Spirit speaks to us in signs, symbols and stories. We also all have Clair senses that we can cultivate, and when we learn to be still enough, we are able to hear nature speaking to us, the land, the flowers, the plants, the trees, the animals. Learning to interpret these messages is part of the healing and reclamation process. So here are the stories, signs and symbols, along with what I was able to innerstand, when sitting with the Candelabra Lily to make this essence:
- Initiation by fire
Every year during the summer months is fire season in Cape Town, and many of the fynbos plants here actually need the fire as the smoke and heat helps their seeds to germinate. The fire season at the end of 2023 and beginning of 2024 was particularly bad and destructive and fires have been getting worse over the past years. Late December, we started to get flare ups close to us in Simon’s Town which is a naval town that has a difficult history of both war and displacement. Another fire then spread from Castle Rock, all the way through Cape Point, to Scarborough and back around to the ridge of the Fynbos Reserve we are living on. We had our family visiting with us, and had to evacuate twice with all the children, including two babies who were 1 and 1 month old at the time. It was such a poignant experience, as fire is a primal element that really brings up our primal fears of death and survival. When you have to leave everything, it is interesting to see what you take with you, and what actually really matters. It was also a time of a lot of ancestral traumas were triggered and a huge anxiety came over me which I was given the opportunity to heal. It had a profound impact on me and the family, and we have been calling it an initiation by fire.
I am obviously not indigenous to these lands, and I’m only born here as my maternal grandfather came to South Africa from Fromm (just outside of Glastonbury) as his mom and him were botanists and my grandmother was stationed in Cape Town during the second world war through the Women’s Royal Navy (WRENs) coming from London. They met when my Nana sent a parcel home through my grandad’s flower business, and it got lost along the way. She went back to find out what happened, he sorted it out, and asked her out at the same time, and the rest as they say is history. My Dad was also born in London to my Irish grandfather from a farming family in Couty Mayo, and my Nan who was from an English military family with some of the family also being from Irish and Scottish roots. I remember both my Nana and Nan speaking to me about their experiences in the war and seeing how this had shaped their lives. From war to colonisation, famine and displacement, to everything else we have experienced and perpetrated as humanity, we are all still holding onto this trauma through epigenetics. The majority of our grandparents and ancestors over the past few hundred years did not get the chance to heal, and the patterns that this has created in families is evident from the subtle ways that we sweep everything under the carpet to the not so subtle of addiction, abuse and destructive behaviours (which is only just scratching the surface). I have done a lot of healing of these ancestral miasmas and traumas, and the work I do is to help others do the same. This essence helps if you are on a journey of breaking cycles and healing from patterns, traumas, curses and covenants in your lineage.
The Candelabra Lily was among some of the first flowers to emerge and bloom out of the ground after these fires. The Earth was all grey like a moon scape with small shoots emerging bringing new life, and there scattered amongst these shoots were glorious, red Candelabra Lilies bringing new life. This essence holds the alchemy of fire, burning away all that no longer serves us and allowing new life to rise out of the ashes. Nothing is lost. All is found. Fire turns lead into gold, is the phoenix rising from the ashes, a source of light and heat, purification and transformation. Too much fire is also obviously not good either, and this essence also helps when processing anger, rage and burning out. The world has conditioned us to be in full bloom all year around which is not natural, and leads to us burning out.
- The Colour and characteristics
The Candelabra Lilies have a large flower head which can have from 20 to 80 flowers on it making a sphere which looks like a candelabra. The one I sat with was red in colour. This indicated that this is root medicine, helping you to root deeper and ground into the Earth, your roots and to come out of survival mode, to come back home to yourself. The many fragmented flowers also spoke to me about how we fragment and develop parts in order to protect ourselves when we experienced different events during our past. This essence helps if you are in the process of healing these different parts of yourself and coming back to wholeness. It helps us to see the inner war and turmoil that so many of us are experiencing and seeing the reflection of within what is happening around the world. Parts work can be very delicate and vulnerable so this will give courage to be able to face what has happened and heal. Accepting all parts of yourself, especially the parts that you have been ashamed of or deny, allows you to also find the gifts that are hidden deep within these places, within the ashes… waiting for you to claim them and rise.
The flower was also the only one still in bloom and located just by a fence, where on one side there was life beginning to emerge and on the other side there was a burned tortoise shell and a Candelabra Lily that had already finished flowering and was drying up. This essence helps when you are feeling lost, if you are within a big life transition, at a crossroads or “sitting on the fence”, to be adaptable, to really slow down and rest your nervous system so you can make the right decisions for yourself, so you can choose life. The medicine of the Tortoise is also so beautiful, slow and steady wins the race. We can so often feel stuck and just want to rush ahead so we feel like we are doing something, instead of slowing and actually really listening to our inner voice, our intuition, which is connected to the unseen, to Spirit, to our guidance team, to the Most High. Slowing down to speed up can feel counter intuitive, however it gives us a chance to truly expand so we have the ability to hold everything that we are dreaming of and co-create it into reality.
- Other stories and symbols
Finally, I made this essence on Human Right’s Day here in South Africa which is commemorated annually as a reminder of the horrendous human right violations that happened during apartheid and the long road that was walked. There is still so far we need to go to reach true freedom and liberation both here and worldwide. As I write this there are terrible genocides still happening around the world in Palestine, Congo, Sudan and other places. Globally, we can no longer hide from our past and how it has shaped who we have become, the patterns and behaviours we are still playing out and how we often just put our head in the sand about it all. We can’t change what has happened, but we can change ourselves, and we can choose what we create together going forward. That comes with acknowledgment and deep healing. This is also why I know that this beautiful essence really wants to help us with collective and lineage healing, with reclaiming the fragments within our mind, body and souls, and returning to wholeness.
There is a word in Irish, the language of some of my ancestors, called Misneach. Evelyn O’Malley gave this definition of it “Misneach encompasses a blend of courage, hopefulness, bravery, and spirit. It can allude to pushing forward, one paw in front of another, through doubt or snow. Brighter and less bellicose than bravery, misneach lingers longer with uncertainty, even as it carries on lifting each tired limb. It knows tears and is changed by them, damp for trying.” May we find the misneach to heal, and may the Candelabra Lily hold us through it.
The land, the water and the preservative
As mentioned, this particular essence was made just outside of Scarborough just up from the Cape Point nature reserve, which is a sacred place in Cape Town where the two oceans of the Atlantic and Indian are said to meet. Mineral mountain water was used from the Overberg.
You are given a choice of the preservative used from either an organic Apple Cider Vinegar from Elgin, Brandy from the Karoo or Honey Liquor Mead made by a local company who are contributing to the preservation of South Africa’s indigenous mead-making heritage. Depending on which one you choose, this will also add in the healing properties and mysteries of the apple, the grape, honey and the bee to the healing that comes from using this essence.
In Summary, the Candelabra Lily may assist and support with
In Summary, taking the Candelabra Lily Essence may assist with and support you with the following:
- Healing fragmented parts, inner turmoil and returning to wholeness
- Ancestral and lineage healing, returning to roots and moving out of survival mode
- Alchemy after experiencing burn out from trying to be in constant bloom
- Finding adaptability during big life transitions or when at a crossroad
Thank you to all the indigenous tribes that tended to this land way before it was colonised and severed, I honour you and the trauma that has happened. I make these essences for us to heal, as not one who owns the land, but is a bridge for reconciliation. The flowers and the plants want to help us heal; may it be so.
