EARTH PRAYERS ritual colour wands ~ for landscapes of skin and stone.
These earth, mineral and medicinal plant ritual colour wands were lovingly gathered along the landscapes that love and care for me year round both in Ireland and in the Austrian Alps. They are a homage to the untamed beauty of this planet and the abundance of wild healing it offers.
Each was created and processed slowly by hand to retain and enhance the essence of the land, the poetry of time and place.
EARTH PRAYERS is released to celebrate the Celtic festival of Bealtaine ~ this sacred earth festival is the portal through which we transition into the fire element/solar season of colour, creativity, passion, and vision! Each colour wand is individually wrapped to prevent colour transfer between wands. Each set comes to you in a bed of wild Mugwort which was gathered on the full moon solar eclipse - this serves to protect your EARTH PRAYERS collection while it is winging its way to you and is to be used as a smoke offering to cleanse your space and connect you with the EARTH PRAYERS ritual colour wands on arrival. Each set also includes a handmade colour swatch detailing each colour in the palate and its name.
HOW TO APPLY AN EARTH PRAYERS COLOUR
The EARTH PRAYERS ritual colour wands are easily applied - to adorn the skin, simply dip the very tip of your chosen colour wand in a little water for one second and make your mark on skin. When you are finished using that colour, lay it somewhere to dry for a few moments before returning it to its box with the rest of its colour family. The same 'water colour' process can be used if applying colour to other delicate surfaces such as leaves or if you wish to have a more solid colour on other surfaces. Drawing 'dry' on rock surfaces will achieve an effect similar to that of chalk, if you wish to achieve a more solid colour then you may want to use the water colour effect by dipping the tip in water as mentioned above. How you work with them is unique to you and your vision though, so just allow yourself to play with them! Ensure you store your EARTH PRAYERS in a dry place, out of direct sunlight.
THE PATH OF EARTH PRAYERS
The idea for EARTH PRAYERS came from my years of travelling around the world, visiting sacred sites, earth energy lines and leys, gridwork out on the land, and seeding prayer. I used to purchase crystals to make into mandalas to be buried as earth offerings, but realized how unethically and destructively crystals are harvested and by purchasing them I was supporting this violence against the planet. I just couldn't. So I moved to creating land art instead, working with what was around me in any given moment. Earth, stone, windfallen leaves, flowers, twigs, shells and more were woven into filaments of prayer over hours, and rather than say I left them there, I prefer to say they were handed over to the elements (and sometimes curious eyes). It was a blessing that deepened my relationship with the non human world in profound ways. I found such solace in this, and deeply appreciated what was created taking on a life of its own. I loved the ephemeral nature of it, the idea of the prayers being claimed by the air, fire, water, earth and spirit, taking on new life and form. I love the impermanence of my doing. The heART of Letting Go ~ what was created did not belong to me, it was merely of me.
My love of earth pigments grew from this 'practice', and combined with my fascination with the indigenous (specifically Celtic) use of ritual colour (see below for more info), it was only a matter of time before I started applying wild colours to the skin both therapeutically and ritually. In the beginning this was a rather rudimentary approach, I gathered mineral rich clay, cleaned it, legivated it, dried it, ground it, and when I wanted to use some, I would mix the powder with a little water and paint it onto the skin with my fingers. While it achieved the desired affect, applying freshly made ritual colour pastes with my hands was 'messy' and also a bit wasteful considering how much work goes into to creating each pigment, so this is where the idea of creating ritual colour wands came to be. I wanted to make ritual colour accessible, easy to apply, clean to use, easy to store, and mobile.
Having worked with boths plants and crystals for over 35 years I consciously try to integrate them into all that I do and knew I wanted to integrate and honor them both with these wands. I gathered crystal and minerals by hand and grinding them into a fine powder (and levigating them) to add to the mix was relatively straight forward, but I wanted to do something different with the plants. Adding powdered dried plants would affect the colour, consistency, make them less 'shelf stable' (as wands are used both wet and dry), and make them uncomfortable (rough) to apply to the skin, so I came up with the idea to create botanical pigments from my plant teachers an