As I sit here reading Laurie, one of my blogging heroes, I remember that I told you I was going to blog about some of the herbs I have gotten to know.

To kick off this endeavor, I want to acquaint you to with the formidable Stinging Nettle. She’s one of the first herbs I learned about, and she remains an important ally.

Nettle’s formal name is Urtica dioica. Don’t mistake other plants commonly called “nettles” for Urtica.

The sting

She does sting. I hear there are some people who get naked in their Nettle patches in the spring, using the stings to shake off the winter cold and “wake them up” for the big energy of the Spring. It’s supposed to bring the blood to the surface, get it moving, or something. The idea of getting naked with Nettle intrigues me, but I haven’t yet worked up the nerve. People with arthritis have reported good effects from nettle stings on the knuckles. The sting is mild in the spring, more of a sharp tingling sting than a burning sting. And they only sting when fresh. Herbal teas, vinegars, etc., and cooked nettles do not sting your mouth.

The sting gets stronger the later it is in the summer. I once stopped to relieve myself by the roadside during the summer I spent in Germany, and I’m pretty sure I squatted in a nettle patch. It was late summer, and I was about 20 years old. It was dark. I felt the stings, but I didn’t know what they were. What a surprise when my ass broke out in hives! My friend C had the same experience. She says she got blisters! Must have been a strong patch.

An herb of Mars

Nettle is an herb of Mars... so if you do go for the full body sting treatment, do it on a good Mars day1. When Mars is trine something in the sky, or something good is going on with your natal Mars. Even better, both! These are days when you are more “in your groove,” and when you are in the groove with Mars, you are in the groove with Nettle. When you are “out of your groove” with Mars, stings and other “ouches” are more “ouchy.” Mars governs headaches, and “hot” conditions like inflammation, rashes, and loose poos.

My Libra ascendant feels the need to apologize for being so scatological. When herbalists talk, we don’t have a problem describing our poos. Digestion is, after all, the foundation of health, as we learned from Kathleen. People who aren’t used to it look at us a little sideways. I won’t get more graphic than necessary. However, given that the condition of your poo says a lot about your internal state of affairs, thus the kind of herbs that will help make it better, I will have something to say about it now and then.

Many of the herbs of Mars, like onions, ginger, garlic, hot pepper— will stimulate you, heat you up, open your pores. I am a fire sign to the max, and I have a hot constitution (Aries Sun, Leo Moon, and 0 planets in water signs!). If I have anything too garlicky or gingery before bed, it sends me over the edge. I can’t sleep, I flop around in bed with what I imagine hot flashes must feel like. I feel agitated, restless, too hot/too cold, and gassy. If I get up and take some bitters, I feel much better.

By the way, have I told y’all that I have been listening to Radio Paradise, and I’m really enjoying it. If you enjoy music from many different genres, you should check it out.

Anyway, nettle doesn’t heat you through and through like other Mars herbs. Nettle shores up your reserves. I run so hot, I burn out my reserves and run rough, like a car when the oil runs low. So I feel chronically drained if I don’t take proper care of myself. Before I figured this out about myself, I would spiral into these periods of very low energy, migraines, frequent bouts of food poisoning. Nettle (along with regular exercise, another Mars remedy) is helping me stay out of that downward spiral. Nettle doesn’t work when I take it every once in a while, but when I take it habitually. I drink a pot of tea a day. This Mars herb nourishes my Mars and helps me to be more focused, disciplined (my Mars conjoins Saturn) and effective.

Elizabeth Brooke, in An Astrological Herbal for Women, has this to say:

Nettle builds and empowers the fire element in a person, and helps to break up excessive watery or waterlogged emotions to allow the person to contact her rage and anger and cut through self-pity and victimhood. It is for evoking the will in women and contacting the warrior within. Nettle will warm a frozen heart and allow for the passion and intensity of fire to blaze forth. It gives a tensile strength to the emotions, rendering them less fragile or overpowering, and allows the woman to contact her own inner resources and feel her own power and resilience.

I’ll just continue on with Brooke, because I really like this next passage:

If you have a way with herbs, like solitude, the silence of a moonlit sky, and can affect events by visualising them, then there is no doubt you are already a witch, whether or not you know this. To me witches are warriors…

The practice of witchcraft is a revolutionary act with its intent to remove the patriarchal state and replace it with an equal and just rule of law. To be a witch is to make a political statement… It is a subversive act, asserting the existence of another, more complete, more wholesome, reality. Witchcraft makes us strong, independent, creative, thoughtful women.

To me, witchcraft isn’t this big statement in my life. I don’t even call myself a witch or proclaim to do witchcraft, because it sounds unnecessary. I am not a religious person. I am simply learning about and making friends with the plants around me. I honor and find meaning in them, and in the Moons and the turning of the seasons. Occasionally in a formal way, but most of the time quietly, by myself.

The idea that this is the subversive act of a warrior intrigues me greatly and feels empowering. I like being this kind of Mars person— a woman whose anger and passion drives her but does not drain her.

Update, 2010! Fellow Martian wise warrior Kimberly is getting stronger and finding more energy with the help of sister Nettle.

1 The first sources I know of to attribute planets to herbs are Paracelsus and Nicolas Culpeper.

Links:
Energy and Stamina the Wise Woman Way

Stinging nettle on Wikipedia

Healing Wise, Susun Weed’s book with an entire chapter on Nettle