During this lunar eclipse in Scorpio—with a horrendous war happening in the Middle East—I’ve been doing a lot of emotional revisiting of my past history. And—“coincidentally” before I started this process—I had been experimenting with Water Violet with Star of Bethlehem and Beech Bach Flower essences. And I just added Shooting Star to the mix—with obvious immediate soothing effect.
Water Violet is for quiet people who tend to go their own way a lot of the time. People with a “Water Violet personality” tend to be very good at what they do—you have plenty of time to read and dive in deep with subjects when your time isn’t taken up with socializing. So others hold Water Violet people’s intelligence in high esteem while over-reacting to their tendency to be “aloof” or keep away from the crowd. And that creates even more problems for quiet, well-educated people, because what quiet soul wants to deal with the harmful projections of other people and other manifestations of damaged humans in this society? That might come off as a “superior attitude” to others but for people in a Water Violet state that’s just common sense. Stay awake, stay away, and put your attention somewhere else. But . . . that leads to a lonely life so Water Violet flower essence can be used to help such a person relax, feel more open to others, and find a deeper connection to other people.
As for the other essences in the mix: Star of Bethlehem helps to deeply soothe old or present feelings of trauma. Beech helps a person tolerate what seems intolerable. And Shooting Star is for when the hurt goes so deep you actually feel like an alien in a strange land much of the time—you’re not just sensitive and quiet like those who need Water Violet—you REALLY want to be sequestered away because, damn, this world we’re living in and how people behave is SUCH foreign territory, it’s hard to comprehend how you could possibly fit in (or want to)!
This morning I woke up with the idea that people from different cultural backgrounds might have more of a need for certain flower essences than others. I am a third generation American. My parents were born in the United States and their parents were Jewish Russian holocaust survivors. My grandparents came from what is now known as Ukraine and Poland, but Russia had invaded and taken over that territory before my grandparents were born so they described themselves as Russian. They came to the United States to escape from pogroms and front line Russian military conscription. Jews who were forced into the Russian army never came back, and pograms resulted in whole villages being burnt to the ground while women were raped and people of all genders and ages were forced from their homes and murdered if they weren’t somehow warned ahead of time and got away. Not unlike what Israelis experienced at the beginning of this current conflict. And sadly, many of them were Eastern European and German holocaust survivors and their children and grandchildren themselves. So, while I am not Zionist and have never wanted to even visit Israel, I do have a connection to how the Jews wound up back in that region and what has gone on since.
I don’t want to get into whether the Jews have a right to be there in the first place and whether the Palestinians are oppressed and innocent bystanders or not in this blog post. That would require me writing a book’s worth of history and education that’s more than a bit daunting to me. Short version: nobody wanted Jewish refugees after World War II although many countries took them in. The area that eventually became Israel was made an occupied territory by the British and League of Nations long before that. And the region is important strategically for MANY reasons (economic ones mostly) that have nothing to do with Jews and their problems. But when Jewish holocaust survivors were running to wherever they could go and deeply wishing they had a homeland they could return to, the League of Nations said, yeah, that might solve two problems at once—how to keep a stronghold in the region and take care of their “Jewish problem” at the same time. Of course, the people living in the Middle East were adamantly opposed, but the world went ahead anyway, and a frightened traumatized group of people escaping from horrific circumstances were dropped into the middle of a major conflict just waiting to happen.
Were they equipped emotionally to deal with that well? Oh, hell, no!
Speaking from my own experience, I grew up with people who had been subjected to the worst kinds of anti-Semitism, not only in eastern Europe but also as new immigrants to the United States. They lived in Jewish ghettos in New York and Boston so they had some feeling of safety among their own, but they deeply mistrusted anyone else. Still they strove to be good citizens and survive in challenging circumstances. They valued education so they studied English and learned as much as they could and encouraged their children to do the same. And being highly educated has its benefits when it comes to making your way in the world. But being sequestered in ghettos while you do so is basically the Water Violet situation on a community wide scale! I was taught how to excel in school but nobody taught me the social skills needed to get along with my peers. Quite the opposite, in fact: I was taught to be cautious and hold back, to be quiet and not make waves (“what will the neighbors think?”), and to never assume I was welcome unless invited into a group. Exactly the opposite of how people make friends and learn to get along with a wide variety of people.
So I didn’t have a lot of friends and spent my time watching and studying my peers in an attempt to figure out why I was so often bullied and “what I might be doing wrong.” I eventually went into the field of psychology and actually did learn how to get along with a wide variety of people. But that was hard won and often emotionally traumatic. And being of a very sensitive nature to begin with, being sequestered safely at home with a person who loves me and our cats, is pretty much my happy place.
Would I, or people from my background, be great at brokering peace in the Middle East with people who hate me and don’t want my home to exist? No way! I’d rather figure out how to help people at a bit of a distance if I could, maybe in a professional role which is what I have done much of my life. But not in a way where I’d be in the fray.
So I woke up this morning thinking that I was taking a “Jewish” flower essence combination. It does make me feel better, but thinking it’s useful to me because I’m Jewish does not. Oh well, I’m still in process with this. And so is the world at this time. (I wish they had more compassion for BOTH sides of the conflict.) I guess this is the kind of exploration a person might do during the lunar eclipse of a Scorpio full moon. Theoretically, it might even do some good.