Ode to Juliette de Bairacli Levy

Juliette de Bairacli Levy is known to many for reigniting the interest and trust in herbalism back in the west.  There are certainly many other peoples that have maintained the lineage of herbal medicine amongst their families and communities throughout this time, yet Juliette's wild and elegant ways of expressing her admiration for the plant world and what this worlds tends - air, water, animals, insects, human beings, spirit - has spoken loudly to many of us on our path to remembering.  Remembering to trust ourselves for answers, to educate ourselves on what we do not know, to have confidence in our earths' offerings and mysterious ways, and that no matter what direction we progress, to do so in reverence for all.

I like to give myself a monthly Juliette dose, to be reminded of all of these things and especially the wildness within ~ no matter how together or tame I can get or seem on the outside.

Here is a fantastic video on Juliette:
http://vimeo.com/18952969

Recently reading one of Juliette's books, Common Herbs for Natural Health ~at the back of the text she has a bit on Rosemary taken from Bankes Herball, a seventeenth century text.  Juliette has many practical and accessible suggestions on supporting well-being, so this is not what you will find in her books overall, yet I just so enjoyed merely reading through this bit, that I wanted to share...

Rosemary
Take the sweet flowres and make a powder therof and bynde it to the ryght arme in a lynen clothe and it shall make thee light and merrie.  Also take the flowres and put them in a chest amonge thy clothes or amonge bookes, and mougthes [moths] shall not hurte them.  Also boyle the leves in whyte wine and wasshe thy face therwith...thou shall have a fayre face.  Also put the leves under they bedded heed, and thou shall be delyvered of all evyll dremes.  Also take the leves and put them in a vessel of wyne...if thou sell that wyne, thou shall have good lucke and spede in the sale.  Also make thee a box of wood and smell it and it shall preserve thy youthe.  Also put thereof in thy doores or in they howse and thou shall be withoute dannger of adders and other venomous serpentes.  Also make thee a barell therof for the rayne and drynke thou of the drynke that standeth therin and thou needs to fere no poyson that shall hurte thee.  And if thou plante it in thy garden kepe it honestly for it is muche profytable.  (p. 193-4.)