Do you believe in magic? You don’t have to believe in magic for it to exist, it has been here since the first word was spoken, creating the dream that we are all playing our part in right now.
When I was younger, I felt magic everywhere, and with time and experiences, I lost touch with it. I have been on a journey ever since to reclaim that magic and have seen it playing out in how my life has unfolded over the last few years. Today I want to share some of that with you by introducing you to our apothecary, which an old word for a person / place that makes and sells medicine from plants. We will be opening shortly and I would like to pay homage to one of the legendary women who has been part of inspiring this journey.
Awakening to my ancestry and gifts
I came across Biddy Early being part of an amazing Celtic Sisterhood with my dear Anam Cara and mentor Jen Murphey who owns the Celtic School of Embodiment. There was just something about Biddy’s story that stuck with me and I went down a rabbit hole looking into her life and all the folklore there is out there about her amazing healing abilities. I had been going through an awakening after burning out back in 2016 while working in corporate, which set me off on a path of healing, stepping into my gifts and rooting deeper into my ancestry. After leaving corporate and starting a coaching business I had a very precise plan on what would happen next and tried to follow a predictable path based on what we are sold a successful coaching business should be and look like.
However, there were other plans for me, and the more I continued on healing myself, and helping others do the same, the more I realised that I am not meant to just be a coach. There were other gifts coming to the surface that wanted to be known and used, and one of those is a gift of working with the flowers and plants. It made sense the more I connected in with my ancestry, as my Grandad from my maternal lineage was a botanist and used to own a flower business where he supplied flowers to the ships. My other Grandad came from a farming family in County Mayo, Ireland which is where I got my maiden surname Connor from. This led to embarking on training and learning about the various types of healing plants, flowers, mushrooms and trees, along with an initiation into other healing modalities.
Who was Biddy Early
Who was this legendary healer Biddy Early then, and why was I sent down the rabbit hole of researching her? Bridget Ellen “Biddy” Early has been called a herbalist, a healer, a fairy doctor, a witch, a wise women (bean-feasa in Gaelic). She was born in County Clare, Ireland in 1798 and went on to become a local legend for her healing abilities which were said to come from a blue bottle that she had been gifted from the Good People, the fae, the sidhe, from the Otherworld. The Irish and other “Celtic nations” continued on with their belief in the fairies and the Otherworld long after the church and colonisation came along and subjugated these beliefs down to mere superstition. Until this day, we as their descendants are the keepers of this wisdom, however they are known all over the world by different names in various traditional healing traditions.
Biddy used to have queues of people coming to her to get remedies, cures and for her gift with prophecy. As with many healers back in those days, she was eventually accused of witchcraft as the church tried to delegitimise folk healers who were mainly women. There is however lore that some of the local clergy also went to see her for ailments. She went to trail for witchcraft in 1865 and was acquitted as the people who accused her withdrew their testimony. To this day there is a fascination with Biddy and you can find out so much more about her, especially from Eddie Lenihan, who has written books and done podcasts after spending time hearing all the stories that were passed down orally about her.
What sparked something in me with Biddy was the fact that she was the only child of John Thomas Connors and Ellen Early. She took on her mother’s surname Early but was actually at birth Bridget Ellen Connors. I am in no way claiming to be a direct ancestor of this legendary woman, however to know we came from the same ancestral pool lit something up inside me. Shortly after that, I had a dream of a woman and she gave me a blue bottle which was the first seed that was planted to start the Blue Bottle Apothecary.
So back to magic…
Fast forward a couple more years, and more magic started to unfold. I had the dream to open the apothecary someday, but it felt more like a five-year plan or somewhere off in the distant future. As a family we had been wanting to move to Cape Town ever since moving back to South Africa after living in London and Switzerland over a 12 year period. It didn’t work out at first but at the end of 2022 we took the plunge, again we had some very specific plans on where we were going to stay and how we thought it would play out.
And… there were other plans for us. After struggling to find a place to stay for the first few months, I was starting to panic, especially as I was now pregnant with my son Finn. I knew that something was coming though, and out of the blue we got the opportunity through a beautiful sister and friend to stay on a Fynbos Reserve just up from Cape Point which is at the southern tip of Africa. I was not able to walk properly for most of the pregnancy, then headed into the early postpartum daze, so I was forced to slow down which allowed me to spend over a year watching the seasons, getting to know the flowers, the plants and the land. Then I started to make the essences, and continue to add new ones as and when I can. We also have plans to create different tinctures and to grow a medicinal plant garden on a patch we have free, so watch this space.
We will be putting these essences out into the world soon, and I am so excited to share the Blue Bottle Apothecary with you. Along with that I will still be providing my healing sessions and packages, I am open to see what other magic unfolds from here. My prayer is to help more people find their magic within them, and to share that with the world… as I say, it is needed now more than ever.
Much love, Beth xxx
