Lavender Advent Les Fleur

One of the common fragrant beauties here in France is Lavender. I love riding through the Lavender fields in Southern France when it blooms in early Summer. Lavender comes from the Latin word Lava, which means to wash. It was one of Mother Mary's flowers, going by the name Mary's Drying Plant. Lavender was used just like rosemary during Medieval Days. They would hang freshly washed clothes over the bushes to scent the laundry as it dried in the warm Mediterranean Sun.

I must say there is nothing like a good bottle of Lavender oil tucked away in one's pocket to help with stress. It helps to create calmness and just is an all around good essential oil to keep the bad vibes away as you travel through the city streets.

The essential oil industry is big business here in the South of France. I once lived in the area very close to Grasses, the capital of perfume and essential oil business. I bought my essential oils from a man in a small store in Menton. We would anxiously wait for the first pressing of the Lavender and the fresh oils would hit the shelves. But the way the essential oil business started in France was because of fashion, not for the medicinal properties of the oils. Catherine d' Medici, born in Florence Italy, married Henry II , King of France in 1547. She was known for her fashion statements and she began to wear kid gloves scented with essential oils of Lavender or neroli oil. It became such a fashion rage between the nobles that the South of France began to create tanneries that would scent the leather gloves with essential oils. Fields and fields of Lavender began to be planted and extracting essential oils became an art form.

But when the French Revolution began the Nobility with the lost their heads began to flee the country. The tanneries were closed down since wearing scented gloves was a sign of nobility and you just did not want to be wearing scented gloves in those days. However, distilling essential oils continued for their healing effects and also for the pleasure of creating perfume.

Lavender teaches to us about our souls need to distill our negative emotions and return to our Essences. The distilling process of essential oils can be looked upon as a symbolic process. The copper still has a big vat, which is where they place the plant material, such as lavender flowers, mixed with water. The water represents your emotions. The vat represents your belly and the plant material could be compared to the different experiences that have happened in your life that are now harvested and ready to become essence.

The fire under the vat brings the water to the boiling point. This could compare to our difficult life experiences that bring our emotions to the boiling point. Now to make essential oils, the boiling water creates steam that is carried though copper tubing. This steam also carries with it the delicate aromatic oil of the plant. We could compare this part of the process of separating our negative emotional experience from the our Spiritual Essence. But there needs to be a willingness to look at the less perfect parts of ourselves and release and transform our negativity and return to the Harmony of our Essential Self. Then, in the distilling process there is a point that the steam goes though this very small tube and evaporates. When the evaporation process happens what you have left is essential oil. So it is in the transformation of our emotional wounding when we have arrived to the place within ourselves of detaching from our dramas or traumas of the past and return to the Essence of who we are and that it found in the Heart Center....then we have thoroughly been washed and transformed by the magic of Lavender.

Lavender's little flower teaches through the color purple, the color of transformation. This plant has ever-lasting quality since its flowers dry very nice and can be used in sachets. But the essential oil was also used by little old ladies. It teaches us how to age gracefully, just as the flowers of Lavender dry on their stock but still retain their essential oils within the smell.

So today we offer Mary's Drying Plant into the Christ Crib for our transformation and returning to the Essence of who we truly are.