Last time I went into the Bach Flower remedies, the eminent British physician who discovered their effects, and some of the history. A person ignorant of the theory behind their use would be likely to assume that they were just magic potions.

Before I get into Animal Essences, which are just as remarkable, I need to point out that Bach Flower Essences are not the only flower essences. If you want to check out an amazingly comprehensive and beautifully explained modality for emotional and spiritual well-being you owe it to yourself to explore www.flowersociety.org and their astonishing book Flower Essence Repertory. It contains dozens of remedies and is totally cross-indexed by emotional and spiritual effects and the individual remedies. Looking up either a remedy or a symptom will give you total access to how the remedies are used by alternative health practitioners.

Now a word about Animal Essences. Point number one, no animals are harmed in making them. Point number two, those of you who have sympathy with the Native American or Celtic way of regarding nature and animals will find most remarkable identities among the results of taking Animal Essences and the helpful properties of guardian or totem animals as narrated in Native American and Celtic stories.

Here are a few examples from the experiences of people in a couple of groups that I am or have been associated with: The Ministry of Sophia, and Le Cercle du Feu (The Circle of Fire). These two groups, the public and the non-public, included many different kinds of body workers and healers, shamans and shamankas with Native American and South American experience, professional psychics, astrologers, some chiropractors, pipe carriers of three tribes, some Rune Masters and Reiki Masters, Wiccan High priests and priestesses, and various magicians mostly associated with Celtic and Golden Dawn traditions. There were also devotees of Muktananda, Gurumayi, Meher Baba, Amma and other Eastern Saints.

All were and are conscious of energy at various levels of sensitivity. Some can see energies as easily as others see French fries, some can switch on and switch off the seeing at will. The magicians can construct energies at will to change states of consciousness, a standard definition of magic. Others sense more than see, but all were good candidates for testing the Wild Animal Essences, which we did in 1997 and after.

It began when I was given the Wolf Essence by a Blackfoot shaman who knew that my Lakota name of Silent Wolf was not just picked out of a hat. One of the group who was a talented energy sighter came to visit me and arrived a few minutes after I had taken the Wolf Essence, a few drops under the tongue, as is usual with essences.

I felt no different at the time but he commented on how clear my wolf had become to his clairvoyant vision. I told him what I had just done. Wolf is a guardian, or power animal that always stays at my left side. I can feel the presence but don’t often see it. He could, and suggested that it was so solid to him that we should take it for a walk in the park.

Well, I knew other people who took their animals out for a run, so the idea wasn’t all that wild for me. I had just never done it myself. So off we went with the wolf on my left and my colleague on my right. We met several other people in the park who were walking their dogs and it was like watching a movie to see how all the dogs made sure they were on the side of their owners away from my left. Some people got really tangled up in the leash as their pets performed miracles of avoidance. It certainly made my wolf more real to me than ever before.

That evening I took the essence to a drumming circle, and as an Elder suggested that the participants might enjoy the effect of Wolf Essence on their drumming. Everyone took a few drops and the drumming was astonishing. The drummers all reported that they felt like a single cell in a giant brain that was orchestrating the drumming. Timing and rhythm were spectacularly perfect.

As a Rune Master I had a couple of students try it out when they went on a journey into the Armanen Rune Realms. Their experiences sounded like some of the shaman soul retrieval work from other modalities, with very vivid visuals and sense impressions.

So of course we sent for a selection and tried others. We used Owl Essence in shamanic journeys, meditation and hair magic ceremonies. Where some of the shaman were asked to perform the removal of problems due to past lives the Owl Essence and its given power to see through dark situations with clarity made the work more effective. Some took it after dreaming and found an interpretation of their dream almost instantly available.

Our body workers often deal with people who seem to be living two or three different lives simultaneously, and who don’t want to go to shrinks. What they call multi-dimensional problems. They found that Buffalo Essence kept both practitioner and client grounded and prevented the feeling of being dispersed. We heard of people not in our group who used it simply because it seemed to ground their stress, or raise their stress threshold to the extent that their high blood pressure normalized.

Some of the female Elders in the groups are associated with croning work, and one of them, with the appropriate red hair and green eyes that would have had the Inquisition on her track immediately in the good old days, is a Witch, a Reiki Master, a hypnotherapist, a Blackfoot pipe carrier and a crone of Women Within. She recommends that people who do the sort of work that she does use Eagle and Buffalo Essence together. Those who have done so have reported a remarkably enhanced ability to connect with the Higher Self and stay grounded, during work that demands a simultaneous awareness of present time and different dimensions.

I use Eagle Essence in my Dar’ Shem initiations because it makes accessing the Higher consciousness almost routine.

All the group members have used Hummingbird after dealing with emotional challenges and in preparing for rituals that must not contain what we call heavy energy.

The most serious Essence used so far, as you would expect from reading the last Harry Potter book, is Snake. Snake is used as an aid in heavy duty transformation work and is almost instantaneous in effect and very powerful. One of the Blackfoot trained shaman was a way over 200 pound ex-marine. He absolutely reveled in very heavy duty rituals and potions, taking them as a personal challenge. I shall never forget how he leaned weakly on my shoulder and his basso profondo voice rumbled in my ear, “Douglas, that Snake Essence sure kicks arse.”

The psychic friend I mentioned way back was a professional masseur and energy worker at the time and he took a heavy dose of Snake thinking it would enable him to check out his aura and chakra balance. He had to stay in bed the whole of Saturday while he got rid of several months of karma over the weekend. Very intense. Use only according to the instructions on the label, then the results are immediate but not uncomfortable. My own recommendation is that people not used to dealing with strong energies just put a couple of drops in their bath tub. This method can be used with all the Essences. Playful folks could try Otter or Dolphin in their bath water. The energy is palpable.

A much gentler transformation Essence is Butterfly. When used in ritual and before sleeping our members have found that it leads to brighter dreams and easier interpretation, bringing useful insights and progress.

Now this all went on just a couple of years after the amazing animal sensitive Daniel Mapel began to sell the Essences commercially. This man has been a park ranger and actually has the natural affinity with living creatures that many bitten and clawed people were convinced they had before their accidents. He and his wife would go camping on Assateague Island, Virginia where there are still many wild horses. Maybe you read Misty of Assateague when you were a kid, a story about one of the wild horses. He and his family are accepted as friends of the herd by the alpha stallion in charge. That’s affinity.

When it became obvious to other people like us that the methods he was using to make the Essences were succeeding in bottling the essence of the Native American and Celtic positive attributes of the animals his business took off.

Now he has some 88 essences including animals from Asia and Africa and they all contain what are considered by the wise spiritual practitioners of these nations the lessons and wisdom that the animals can contribute to sensitive human beings who realize that they too are part of the web of nature, not its master.

These Essences are a way of connecting to the spirits of the animal kingdom in a way that has not been available to ordinary folk before, without shamanic training.

If you have a power animal these essences are the perfect way to enhance your acquaintance. If you haven’t already figured out your power animal or animals you could use the method from the book and deck Medicine Cards by Jamie Sams and David Carson. I used the ‘random’ method they suggested and all my power animals were in the spread that their method produced. If you have Celtic tendencies you could use the Druid Animal Oracle by Philip and Stephanie Carr-Gomm. Should you try Animal Essences and become an enthusiast then you will probably want the wonderful card set prepared by Daniel himself, Wild Earth Cards…Spiritual Remedies.

It was the perfect gift for one of my most talented students who is a multi-generation streghe from Tuscany, because the summaries on the card face are in English and Italian.

Now these essences work like magic in many folks, but to be fair so do the drugs of the allopaths work like magic in many folks, but the Flower Remedies, Homeopathic remedies and Animal Essence Remedies don’t kill about 120,000 people a year who die from obscenely expensive, FDA approved drugs, legally prescribed by certified physicians. Nobody has been hurt by homeopathic type, energy distilled remedies. That may seem somewhat of an advantage to you. No side effects except positive ones, when used according to common sense and the label’s instructions.

So you can surf the Web at www.animalessence.com for Animal Essences. If you are already into Bach remedies and such go to rainbowcrystal.com. This site deals with every kind of energy remedy including Animal Essences. And for another overview try http://www.essences.com Your efforts will be richly rewarded, and your options for mood changes and emotional problems vastly increased.

Next time I’ll go into other methods of altering and accessing what are known as higher states of mind in a positive way, the results of which might again look like magic to one ignorant of the philosophy of the method, and like the Essences would be immediately dismissed, without investigation, by left brain dominants whose comfort zone was threatened.

Let me end with the potions quote from Harry Potter that made me a Severus Snape fan from day one, in spite of his abrasive façade. From his introduction to his first year class:

‘As there is little foolish wand-waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic. I don’t expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses. I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death — IF you aren’t as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach.’