Clean Slate And Fresh Page

New Year’s Resolutions - Beginning Again

Because Lucky Six Farms works so intimately with the forces of cosmic time, we recognize the subtle psychological valence inherent in our Western tradition of new year’s resolutions. Yes, the idea is about as old, tired, hackneyed, and cliche as any such worked-to-death meme can get, but the reason it still sticks to our popular repertoire like glue can be found in its underlying power to effect real, lasting change. Our calendar year is constructed to mimic our own life courses, to pass from uneasy, dim uncertainty to cold, burgeoning darkness after a long interval of maturing bright action. This convenient, “organic” demarcation offers new personal opportunity after the passage of four easy-to-recognize seasons. It allows us sufficient temporal distance to look back and conduct a meaningful evaluation of where we have fallen short. The new year thus creates a portal - artificial and arbitrary as it may now seem - whereby we can directly confront our old defects and determine to rectify them. Whatever our position with regard to this approach, we should understand that the most necessary tool in forging quality new year’s resolutions is a clear, discriminating mind coupled to calm, integrated physical stability.

New Year’s Resolutions - Holding The Line

What meme is as strong as new year’s resolutions? Ironically yet somehow unsurprisingly, the only seasonally associated concept carrying equal weight is the anticipated violation of new year’s resolutions! We have become so accustomed to denigrating our own determination and willpower that we often compete with one another - albeit subconsciously - to see who will cave first to the destructive inertia of old habits. But we need not conform to this pathetic obverse of the new year’s coin. For as long as we can maintain our original clarity of intent, we can perceive the benefits of our resolutions not as weak, distant abstractions but rather as living forces coming to our aid and operating for our immediate benefit. The regular use of our certified organic, purifying White Sage products - smudge sticks, cones, essential oil, hydrosol, and whole leaves - can help immensely in tuning our psyches into this task.

New Year’s Resolutions - Vision And Truth

Hopefully, the idea of new year’s resolutions serves as no more than a mnemonic tool for the job of clear-headed understanding that really faces us at every turn. We trust that our aromatic products, generated, processed, and packaged hand-in-hand with Mother Nature herself, can ease the challenges - periodic and otherwise - our customers face day in and day out.

By Alan Beck

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Reiki’s Perfect Complement

Energy Healing - External Environments

Among Lucky Six Farms’ roster of repeat customers, practitioners of energy healing - and Reiki in particular - rank as some of the most loyal. No deep investigation is required to understand the reason for their amazingly consistent patronage. While Reiki techniques channel wholly benevolent, therapeutic energy and thus demand no specific set of material accoutrements, proponents have learned from long experience that certain environmental settings are much more conducive to the free flow of healing energy than others. Our certified organic White Sage hydrosol, in particular, has proven to be a wonderful tool for preliminary cleansing of ambient conditions, whether encountered in homes, institutional settings, or natural spaces. While the thick, purifying smoke of White Sage smudge sticks might not be suitable in confined areas or where the very young, elderly, or people with auto-immne disorders reside, hydrosol can be employed to quickly rid the air of both negative vibrations and unpleasant odors that interfere with effective energy healing.

Energy Healing - Internal States

Clearly, the internal state of Reiki practitioners is of crucial importance for establishing and maintaining the vital current of life-enhancing energy upon which its techniques so intimately depend. Assuring from the outset that the right channel is accessed and remains open and untainted by disruptive astral impressions must always be of paramount importance for optimum employment of such therapies. Again, our White Sage hydrosol shows itself to be the perfect Reiki complement. A few quick sprays unobtrusively yet efficiently energize the mind, even as they simultaneously work to calm bodily nervous tension. Practitioners have found the combination to be unbeatable for opening and tapping into the full power of the key Reiki healing channel.  

Energy Healing - Our Sacred Aromatics

In truth, not just our special White Sage hydrosol but the full inventory of our certified organic and wildcrafted products exists to accommodate the challenging, multifaceted tasks of healing confronting us in today’s post-modern society. Reiki, in all of its various traditions, and focused energy healing represent only a few ways by which we we can better nurture ourselves, each other, and our sacred Mother, the Earth. Thus, we hope blog readers will spend a few moments perusing our full range of sacred offerings so as to take full advantage of the many avenues for positive change represented therein.

By Alan Beck

 

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Lesson Of The Three Wise Men

Spiritual Gifts - Past

In the depths of Winter, one of Christianity’s holiest festivals takes special note of the spiritual gifts brought by Three Wise Men. Unsurprisingly, Lucky Six Farms has always found this element of the Nativity to be of particular importance. The presents - gold, frankincense, and myrrh - clearly reflect Divine qualities meriting unsurpassed honor, especially as these were viewed in the Old World of Near Eastern culture. Today, we have little problem understanding the first gift, as gold has lost none of its luster or value across wide oceans and intervening centuries. But many have missed or dismissed the significance of the remaining two offerings. Why did Wise Men bring such substances?Frankincense and myrrh were the principal sacred aromatics of that time. When burned together, the pair were held to open mundane consciousness to the transcendent Supreme. In fact, numerous places of worship still look to the practical lesson of these spiritual gifts, employing them in the same fashion.

Spiritual Gifts - Present

The idea of sacred aromatics has never been confined to just one region or era. In fact, it is well-nigh universal, encountered wherever and whenever humanity wishes to bring the highest and best closer. Thus in the New World of what is now called the Americas, indigenous peoples called upon a similarly limited roster of plant products to purify both minds and environments prior to important events. Probably the single most widely respected substance of this kind was - and still is - White Sage (Salvia apiana). Smoldering traditional White Sage smudge bundles, often designated as sticks or wands, remain vital accompaniments to virtually every significant Native American rite. By dispelling negative psychic residua while energizing and clarifying insight, the smoke insures that participants fully resonate with a ritual’s intent and receive its undiluted wisdom and power.

Spiritual Gifts - Future

Alternative spiritual paths - including unique, highly individualistic approaches - have successfully adopted the notion of sacred aromatics. This is simply because these substances work and work well. No doubt, as new ways are forged to the Infinite Divine, White Sage and its sister plants will see expanding employment. We are privileged to remain one of the wold’s primary sources for many of these products, including organic smudge bundles of White Sage, Cedar, and Yerba Santa. May they open our hearts to the wondrous blessings bestowed from on high!

By Alan Beck

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Contemplating Bolon Yokte’ K’uh

Cycles Of History - Unraveling Time’s Thread

For as long as humanity has rendered ordered accounts of key events, putative cycles of history have garnered close attention from scholars and mystics alike. The Maya were only one of many civilizations who conceptualized time as Ouroboros, a symbolic serpent consuming its tail, a temporal round whose end forges a new beginning in its own likeness. Thus, time’s mysterious thread was seen knotted into a ring; dynamics of the past were, when viewed judiciously, held to foreshadow affairs to come. Among Near Eastern peoples, Ibn Khaldun proclaimed the same doctrine in aristocratic courts of 14th Century Egypt, just as the venerable Oswald Spengler explicated it in fine detail to masses of literate Westerners as the last century opened. Many of us at Lucky Six Farms believe cycles of history can either clarify or obfuscate the times we live in, depending upon whether their templates are employed with insight or ignorance.

Cycles Of History - Baktun Endings And Beginnings

Because of the considerable accomplishments of Maya society, especially in the areas of mathematical notation and astronomy, our popular media have focused unusual attention on the publication date of today’s blog: December 21, 2012. For on this day, the circa 5125-year Baktun 13 concludes, drawing the preceding Fourth World to a close with the investiture of Bolon Yokte’ K’uh, God of Nine Strides. He is a deity closely associated with conflict, monopolistic trade, and the ancient Central American Underworld, an astral realm peopled with every species of demonic spirit imaginable. Clearly, both those who see this date as an apocalyptic end of the world and those viewing it as simply a listless, mechanical turnover of an arbitrarily protracted calendar labor in equal error. Neither the Maya of old nor any intelligent person living today would share such extreme and ludicrously unrealistic perspectives. What, then, is the authentic significance of today’s great cyclic transition?

Cycles Of History - The God Of Nine Strides

We do not have to look far to see the frightening manifestations of Bolon Yokte’ K’uh: turn on any televised news report or read an Internet journal documenting current events worldwide. Neither esoteric ceremony nor vision quest is needed to contemplate his terrifying countenance. Indeed, his investiture is unprecedentedly grand; never before have such sophisticated instruments of exploitation, surveillance, and coercion been coordinated and fine-tuned to cover the entire populated globe. But, as the Maya well understood, the human spirit remains ever independent and unconquerable. Though the Underworld’s minions may reign among us for a time, their tenure is as surprisingly brief as it is stark. Such is the Way of Nature and the spiritual Path of humankind. That it is always darkest before the dawn is the primary message of cyclic history. We hope our organic products may provide a little light against the suffocating embrace of Bolon Yokte’ K’uh’s stygian night, bringing sources of blessed illumination that, although humble, will serve those whose faith, compassion, and energy are bound to carry us through this long, challenging sunrise.

By Alan Beck

 

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Your Day In Court

Litigation Illumination - Casus Belli

Although litigation is rarely a desirable or pleasant affair, it is nevertheless so common a feature of our post-modern life that few individuals manage to attain middle age without entering a courtroom as petitioner, plaintiff, or defendant. In addition, our legal system has grown important and complex enough to host an immense variety of careers, including but certainly not limited to attorneys, expert witnesses, clerks, and judges. At first glance, nothing would seem as far afield from this vast arena as Lucky Six Farms’ traditional, organic White Sage aromatics. However, this is not the case! The decision to take a particular matter into court necessarily requires both clear headedness and sound rationale. Such prerequisites are uniquely the psychic province of our primary product line. In fact, Salvia apiana’s powerfully purifying and energizing effects were a closely-guarded secret behind much successful litigation in past eras and remain so to this very day!

Litigation Illumination - Preparation And Strategy

One of my prior blogs noted the role played by White Sage in laying the groundwork for effective real estate transactions. Much the same factors come into play when prospective legal matters are at issue. Today’s courtrooms are notorious for their emphasis on thorough case preparation and rigorously rehearsed strategies. Quite a few highly-regarded lawyers - who are also loyal customers - invariably utilize White Sage smudge or hydrosol prior to laying out a roster of key documents and before planning their systematic approach to a difficult case. These products unobtrusively serve to open a lucid psychic space where untoward legal developments and objections can be anticipated, fairly evaluated and countered. In a similar vein, evidence for and against specific courses of action may be carefully weighed before they are actually encountered during the heat of a trial.

Litigation Illumination - Before The Bench

Like seasoned actors waiting in the wings for the curtain to rise, even the most experienced and savvy attorneys inevitably experience anxiety and nervous tension before presenting their cases for official judgement and record. The situation creates another opportunity for our White Sage essential oil or hydrosol to manifest its traditional virtue. Just a drop on a pulse point or diffused into the air will calm the physical body while strongly energizing the intellect and its capacity for abstract thought. For centuries, lawyers - taking their cue from brethren in the commercial sector - have availed themselves of this simple, economical, yet remarkably efficient solution for pre-trial jitters and mental blocks. Obviously, claimants can put our products to similarly practical use: we often receive glowing testimonials to this ostensibly unconventional approach to legal triumph!  

By Alan Beck

 

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Benevolent Intent

Power Of Prayer - Cultivation

Lucky Six Farms is - and always has been - a firm believer in the power of prayer. And by prayer we do not mean only a benevolent wish expressed openly and verbally to the Divine but also a fervent, consistent intent to create and distribute products which will always manifest the best humanity presently has to offer and promises for the future. Our prayers begin when seeds and cuttings are first gifted to their vegetative womb that is the incomparably rich soil of Mother Earth. Often, these delicate seedlings and initial runners must be started in cloistered, climate-controlled chambers specially protected from the ravages of wind and poring rain so common in the high deserts of our American Southwest. We never treat these embryonic sacred herbs as fungible commodities but rather as new living representatives of potent spirit helpers, traditional intermediaries between ourselves and the ineffable, ultimate Creator of All. We thus bring the power of prayer into the fundamental mystery of their germination, their manifestation to us here and now.

Power Of Prayer - Harvest

We understand that harvest implies both life and death and necessarily involves us in the alpha and omega of our conditional existence itself. Miracles begin and end us, surrounding us at every step of our journey, no matter how protracted or brief. At harvest time, many of the Lucky Six Farms staff accompanied by monks from Madre Grande monastery attend unique services to honor the many sacrifices of our herbal allies. During this critical period, when these entities are purposefully transitioned from field to ceremonial form, from sun, moon, and star-lit outdoors to closely illumined interiors, from natural growth to human service, we monitor all our words and deeds with great care. On several occasions, when this proved insufficient and inadvertent dissent or conflict marred the process, we put quantities of material aside to be recycled rather than sold, because we believe that prayer is incomplete if not firmly supported by intent. We will not promulgate products that do not actually reflect purity, compassion, and helpful sincerity at every stage of their preparation. The power of prayer means our business morale is real and substantial rather than meretriciously superficial and mechanical.

Power Of Prayer - Processing, Packaging, And Distribution

Each and every item we offer is processed, packed, and distributed with love. We intend that each, without exception, be used for spiritual elevation and purification. This is our pledge to you, our customers, and to ourselves as proactive proponents of the power of prayer. Thus, our prices are made, not to bloat profits for a select few, but to be as reasonable and economical as possible, so the incredible benefits of these sacred aromatics may be enjoyed by as many sincere seekers as possible. Happy experience and the many testimonials we receive daily testify to the power of our prayers and those of our clients as well. May we use these amazing gifts of Nature to better work together and uplift the world.

By Alan Beck

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Works Of Ceremonial Magick

Spiritual Health And Hermetic Tradition

As has been previously emphasized many times in this Lucky Six Farms blog, there are probably as many authentic dimensions to spiritual health as there are seekers. Some of the most intriguing and thoroughly documented avenues to metaphysical wholeness can be found in practices of European ceremonial magick and its associated Hermetic doctrines. Founded upon the notion that deficient astral forces of whatever kind may be significantly augmented via appropriate ritual, the conceptual basis of ceremonial magick is rooted in the value of transcendent balance. Thus, the practitioner sought to be fully comfortable and function productively both in his/her skin and external environment. Spiritual health was viewed in much the same fashion as physical wellness: a state of perfect integration with the universe at large, of microcosm with macrocosm.

Spiritual Health - Invocation

One aspect of achieving this ultimate balance was effected via ceremonial invocation of highly benevolent cosmic intelligences. Because these were usually classified as intrinsically angelic and therefore wholly benevolent in character, they were encouraged to merge into the body/mind complex of the magician, who conducted the rite within a focusing boundary Circle. Needless to say, such entities were much more inclined to integrate into pure human abodes than polluted ones, so profound prayer combined with classic banishing rituals like those of the Pentagram and Hexagram were employed prior to any direct appeal to a prospective indwelling spirit. Nor could purely external aids be neglected, so the burning of traditionally purifying herbal agents like White Sage became an absolutely integral component of all such rites.

Spiritual Health - Evocation

Since it has long been recognized in esoteric circles that humans may approach perfection but, like terms in an infinite series, never actually attain it, ceremonialists sought to come to grips with curiously potent yet intrinsically unbalanced aspects of reality. In conventional perspectives and marked contrast to the entities noted above, such intelligences were generally classed as demonic. In order to better emphasize the psychic separation ideally existing between the Hermetic magician and such spirits, these entities were asked - or even ordered! - to manifest strictly as external agents who would only be welcomed outside a clearly delimiting Circle of Art. (We should not be surprised to learn that this insulating procedure was often frustrated.) Nevertheless, as all grimoires note, even the most radically deviant intelligence is invariably repelled by pollutions and ritual impurities. So the judicious use of purifying aromatics like White Sage was also mandated in these contexts. Lucky Six Farms is proud to note that all their certified organic White Sage products are as efficacious in today’s Hermetic rituals, whatever the orientation or Path, as they have been in prior eras.

By Alan Beck

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Stresses Of A Festive Season

Family Gathering Dynamics

The family gathering, an inexorable event concomitant and virtually identified with year-end festivities, often generates equivalent titers of joy and stress. A fundamental reason for this dissonance is not difficult to ascertain, even for the psychoanalytically untutored.  Simply stated, the more divergent personalities are compelled to occupy the same space, the greater the opportunities for interpersonal conflict. Since Holiday celebrations are usually geared to accommodate friendly expressions rather than verbal or physical fisticuffs, problematic situations can readily accrue to the chagrin of both hosts and guests alike. Other than eschewing our beloved traditions altogether, is there any way to relieve the ambient tension incumbent on these seasonal celebrations? Lucky Six Farms is quick to answer this rhetorical query with a resounding “Yes!” Indeed, we wholeheartedly declaim that the most irritating aspects of any family gathering may be easily attenuated through prompt, judicious use of our famous White Sage aromatics.

How To Defuse A Family Gathering

Mutual enjoyment should occupy the collective heart of all seasonal festivities. However, simultaneously turning participant thoughts toward that end can prove challenging at best. Yet, there is really no need for resort to radical solutions, no necessity to confine habitually belligerent Uncle Joe to a basement crawl-space or arrogant Aunt Mabel to a closet turned powder-room. Instead, what is required is a literal clearing and cleaning of the ambient psychic atmosphere. Fortunately, our White Sage products have, for centuries, been successfully employed to accomplish this very task. What’s more, every  type of venue can be addressed with a perfectly appropriate White Sage vehicle. For outdoor or large areas, proportionally-sized smudge sticks can be smoldered in unobtrusively placed ashtrays, seashells, or other heat-resistant containers. In smaller, more confined spaces, our pure, proprietary-formula smudge cones are just the ticket, especially when ignited in our convenient heart-burners. For the tiniest and most intimate situations or where very young, elderly, or immuno compromised people are present, our White Sage hydrosol is a perfect complement.

Make Your Family Gathering Positively Memorable

Of course, sometimes our purifying and energizing White Sage solutions may be neglected neglected through ignorance or inadvertence. But there is no need to succumb to ostensibly overwhelming forces of anxiety or stress. Even if problems arise, you can disengage from post-party negativity by brewing a one-leaf tisane and leisurely sipping it after the whirlwind of events has finally blown over. Confidence in Lucky Six Farms aromatics is well-deserved and forthcoming from customers the world over: try them yourself and be amazed at the wonderful results!
 
By Alan Beck

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Trying Transition Times

Optimal Coping Strategies

Along with a significant portion of the globe, our staff at Lucky Six Farms is busy preparing a variety of coping strategies to accommodate this month’s annual calendric transition superadded to the much ballyhooed but poorly understood passage from the thirteenth to the fourteenth Mayan Baktun. Whether forged from inexorable time cycles charted long in advance or adventitious events set in motion by mysterious vagaries of fortune, significant transitions are necessarily marked by a combination of high emotion and pointed intellectual assessment rarely encountered during more mundane periods. Tension, anxiety, stress, and worry thus become inevitable - and usually counterproductive - concomitants, needlessly handicapping crucial decisions made by those who can least afford the luxury of miscalculation or mistake. Given those conditions, is it any wonder that our search for optimal coping strategies assumes a keenly sharpened relevance?

Assisting Our Body’s Coping Strategies

Since the body generates our principal interface with the physical universe, tending to our material health and well-being should be a priority for coping with the strain of transitional circumstance. One of the best remedies for problems of this nature is the judicious use of California White Sage (Salvia apiana) at the first sign of difficulty. White Sage has been employed for millennia by indigenous peoples to calm muscular discomfort and jangled nerves. What’s more, Lucky Six Farms has made this pleasantly aromatic herb readily available in a number of convenient forms, suitable for almost any environment from outdoor stadia to tiny apartments. Deep relaxation prompted via a smoldering smudge stick, sprayed hydrosol, or one-leaf tisane can open remarkably productive avenues of social interaction not normally available.

Strengthening Our Psyche’s Coping Strategies

The beneficial effects of White Sage, however, do not simply stop at the outermost edge of our being. Traditional spiritual practices found throughout the length and breadth of the Americas venerate this high desert herb as a sacred vehicle for enabling psychic purity. Couched in more pedestrian terms, White Sage quickly energizes the most positive aspects of our outlook while dissipating negative impressions so frequently left in the wake of conflict and confusion. In this connection, it is worthwhile to note that, unlike so many competing products, Lucky Six Farms White Sage aromatics are fully approved for Native American ceremonial use. Whatever your December coping strategies may be, we wish you and yours the best of health, brightest happiness, and spiritual fulfillment during the upcoming year!

By Alan Beck

Harmonious Living

What Is Healthy Lifestyle?

The staff at Lucky Six Farms along with the monks and friars of our leaseholder Madre Grande Monastery are often asked to opine about “What is healthy lifestyle?” Motivation probably springs from observation of our close and evidently productive ties to organic farming, ecologically sustainable business, alternative healing, and traditional approaches to spirituality. Indeed, we believe the question - and its appropriate answer - are uniquely relevant in today’s complex and confusing socioeconomic milieu. In this regard, it is interesting that the Bible itself declaims (Proverbs 29:18 KJV) “where there is no wisdom the people perish.” Our plethora of worrisome post-modern predicaments arise from dynamics fundamentally rooted in dis-ease and dis-functionality, from a profound lack of insight into the problematic issues of  “What is healthy lifestyle?”

What Is Healthy Lifestyle? - The Core Truth

We, of course, can only offer answers based upon decades of prayerful inquiry, sincere work, and amenable outcomes. We possess neither a direct nor exclusive line to absolute truth. Nevertheless, our conception of healthy lifestyle is definitive. It is easily comprehended even by those whose orientation is relatively far removed from key perspectives informing and underlying it. In brief, we view compassion as the primary factor necessary for healthy living. Compassion - the quality which allows us authentic identification with the plight of others, both human and animal - should be the principal tie binding us to family, friends, society, and the whole wide world at large. We hold the active, vibrant nature of this connection to be primordially Divine and, in fact, the fount from which all spiritual sentiment ultimately emerges. 

What Is Healthy Lifestyle? - Pursuits And Priorities

For those of us readily acknowledging this view, perhaps one of the most challenging things we must come to grips with is the matter of priorities. What does compassion actually count for, if it is forced to take an uncomfortable back seat to a range of other “hard-headed, tough-minded, and (ostensibly) pragmatic” goals? Like a delicate herbal seedling, compassion can only take root and grow to be effective if it is proactively, conscientiously tended. Otherwise, ruthless psychic weeds will inevitably choke it off before any of its inherently potent, health-giving properties can manifest in our lives. Every aspect of our business is conducted in the hope that all our sacred aromatic products, wherever and whenever they are used, will prove conducive to such benevolent ends.

By Alan Beck

At Your Best

Facets Of Glamor - Skin Health And Tone

What constitutes authentic glamor? Clearly, no single factor alone can create that radiant yet altogether inexpressible personal magnetism we associate with the term. Factors both external and internal play a part. And throughout recorded history those seriously interested in acquiring it have sought assistance from an array of herbal products, with varying degrees of satisfaction. In our intensely visually oriented culture skin health and overall tone have always been sine qua non for widely acclaimed glamorous celebrities. Thus, herbal treatments known to attenuate problems like acne, eczema, and blemishes are highly valued among individuals most often classed as possessors of glamor.

Facets Of Glamor - Upbeat Mood And Bright Demeanor

One of the most venerable herbal promoters of total skin health is pure, organic White Sage Essential Oil. Just a drop or two is sufficient to accelerate beneficial circulation in critical areas. For those who want to avail themselves of a milder or more frequent approach, White Sage Hydrosol is the key. White Sage’s reputation among cinema stars and models is little talked about but well established. Perhaps this is because White Sage Essential Oil and Hydrosol also address a number of internal obstacles to true glamor. In particular, these substances are potent dispellers of gloom and residual negative vibrations. Relaxing the body as they simultaneously energize the mind, these remarkable aromatics quickly generate the upbeat mood and bright demeanor so necessary for glamorous personalities to shine.

Facets of Glamor - Use Only The Best

Lucky Six Farms has long specialized in the cultivation and processing of 100% pure, certified organic White Sage products. These conspicuously include the formulations mentioned above: White Sage Essential Oil and White Sage Hydrosol. Both are prayerfully and painstakingly distilled from herbs grown and fully protected - over the long path from seed to bottle - from toxic pollutants and petrochemical toxins. Natural children of the southern California high desert, they lend the beauty of their environment to those who choose to use them intelligently. So if you are looking to augment your own distinctive aura of glamor this Holiday Season, please give some thought to the products we proudly offer at Lucky Six Farms!

By Alan Beck

 

The Archetype Of Fire

Fire Symbol - Protective Assurance

Going about a rather mundane business the other evening reminded me that the fire symbol still retains as much valence today as in ages past. High desert fields of Lucky Six Farms can get surprisingly cool at night, even though our sunny southern California clime rarely experiences the kind of winter chill common in most other States. As I stacked kindling first followed by a sized gradient of dry branches in my fireplace, my thoughts noted I was setting a kind of primordial guard, one which had served humanity well for probably over a million years. For fire naturally seals an area and its inhabitants not only against inclement weather but also depredations of wild beasts and the encircling darkness of the unknown. By creating a striking image of how stygian regions of our minds might be rapidly and radically illuminated, the fire symbol has come, in many traditions, to signify spiritual illumination itself.

Fire Symbol - Carrier Of Intent

Today, we can only speculate about what fire may have meant to ancient societies where a common thread of written record cannot be established with certainty. However, where reliable histories exist, it is clear that fire, especially in ceremonial contexts, was viewed as an agent capable of accurately carrying wishes and pleas from humans to powerful disembodied entities. Flames were seen as striving ever upward, away from crass physicality and toward a celestial or astral plane. Miniscule particles constituting smoke - portions of burnt offerings themselves - inevitably accompanying this process could be observed to thin, disperse, and ultimately vanish as they rose whirling into the empyrean. Fire thus embodied the crucial passage from mundane to transcendent, from earthly to heavenly, from narrowly circumscribed human understanding to greater, all-encompassing wisdom.  

Fire Symbol - Continuity of Tradition

As I have noted in prior blogs, smudge sticks have always been and continue to be Lucky Six Farms’ most popular item. Indeed, this trend has picked up momentum as our organic White Sage smudge sticks have been augmented by Black Sage, Cedar, and Yerba Santa. Perhaps this is due to the fact that these attractive, compact wands offer a very definitive connection to Native American traditions regarding fire and its inherent symbology. Known and respected for millennia by virtually all indigenous societies throughout North and Central America, smudge sticks have seen burgeoning popularity worldwide via savvy Wiccan and New-Age practitioners along with magickal ceremonialists. We are proud to maintain this vital channel to the wonder of fire open and effective as ever!

By Alan Beck

Other Calendars

Calendric Wisdom South Of The Border

The calendric wisdom of indigenous Mesoamericans has come to be increasingly appreciated in recent years. As prescient observers of celestial cycles and their connections, agricultural and otherwise, to terrestrial events, they came to remarkably similar conclusions about the nature of time itself, despite striking cultural disparities. Spurred by academic impetus imparted by early investigators along with the pending conclusion of the thirteenth Baktun, scholarly interest has focused primarily upon Mayan temporal mensuration. Other systems evolved throughout this region, however, also offer fascinating material, especially when evident parallels are highlighted and psychically explored. Lucky Six Farms, in particular, is convinced that the depths of Mesoamerican calendric wisdom have yet to be fully or fairly plumbed.

Calendric Wisdom - Aztec And Maya

Probably the best known alternate Central American calendric system was developed by the Aztecs. The complex nature of all such systems has long been recognized, since each significant social group employed not just one but several intercalated calendars, each with a specific purpose. Like the Maya, the Aztecs recognized an overriding ceremonial primacy for a recurring 260-day cycle wherein constituent units were assigned simultaneous numerical and symbolic aspects. Enumeration was progressively incremented through subcycles of thirteen digits but twenty symbols, thus requiring passage of 260 days until numeral and symbol again matched their initial configuration, resetting the cycle at its starting point. The Maya referred this the entire sacred 260-day count as the Tzolkin, while the Aztecs used the term Tonalpohualli. In both cases, however, it is clear that the orderly designations were utilized to accommodate a highly specific sequence of presiding deities. The better these entities and the transitions from one to another were understood, the better one could adapt to shifting conditions inherent in their qualities.

Calendric Wisdom - Interpreting The Counts

It is interesting to note how even extreme pressures of cultural heterogeneity coupled with inevitable vicissitudes and horrors engendered by foreign conquest have produced so few ostensible divergencies in attributes of individual days. For example, the day on which I am penning this blog according to the Tzolkin is 12 Muluc (Water); its Tonalpohualli designation is 12 Atl (Water). Thus, despite semantic differences, key aspects of the period remain virtually identical. Although this kind of striking consistency is by no means uniform across the two calendric systems, it is nonetheless common enough to be indicative of a powerful noumenal foundation, a conceptual base transcending arbitrary vagaries of cultural whim and accident. In this spirit, we hope our inventory of venerable herbal aromatics, including smudge sticks and White Sage essential oil, smudge cones, and whole leaves, always subserves their highest traditional and sacred roles. 

By Alan Beck

 

Seasonal Spotlight

Thanksgiving’s Origins

Thanksgiving marks the inception of the most important American holiday season, although retailers, including Lucky Six Farms, usually commence concerted year-end marketing efforts immediately after Halloween. Media pundits, pop psychologists, and a variegated collection of pulpit pounders have a field day during this period, so I feel right at home freely opining about the true meaning of these wonderfully celebratory yet duly solemn times. Although not personally present to generate pleasant reportage for the event, I believe the story told concerning our very first Thanksgiving is probably true. Native Americans (henceforth to be designated as Indians on account of a few nominal navigational errors) and newly-landed Pilgrims feasted together at the behest of the latter as testimony to their benevolent largesse. Since both parties held deeply, yet somewhat divergent, spiritual views, Thanksgiving soon became an eclectic, culinary expression of gratitude for Divine favor bestowed over the prior twelve months.

Thanksgiving Thoughts

While some never tire of descrying how creeping commercialism has gradually subverted Thanksgiving’s originally pure message, I take a more pragmatic approach. Since trade and business are as venerable as human society itself, no primordial wrong is engendered when they underscore religious themes. In fact, extensive material considerations have always functioned as handmaidens to higher endeavors: witness the elaborate preparations necessary for serious rituals conducted by every faith and tradition throughout recorded and - as places like Stonehenge and Gobekli Tepe imply - even unrecorded history. We spend the better part our lives focused on issues of physical survival and comfort, so is it any wonder that enterprises subserving those needs inevitably rise to prominence in worshipful acknowledgement of the Ineffable Transcendent.

Thanksgiving In Action

In precisely that spirit, then, it behooves me to once again point out the value of our offerings during our sacred festivals. Our ecologically cultivated, prayerfully harvested, hand-processed, and certified organic White Sage products - essential oil, hydrosol, smudge sticks, cones, and whole leaves - have long played an integral role in authentic Native American, Wiccan, and alternative purification. In addition, our new lines of herbal smudge wands - Black Sage, Cedar, and Yerba Santa - have the potential to open an exciting range of new psychic horizons for savvy customers worldwide. We hope all of our readers enjoyed a delightful Thanksgiving and can now look forward to a blessed Holiday Season!

By Alan Beck

Birth Of A Smudge Stick

Smudge Preliminaries

By far, Lucky Six Farms’ most popular products are smudge sticks. For many years, we made them exclusively from certified organic White Sage but have recently expanded our stocks to include Black Sage, Cedar, and Yerba Santa gathered from remote, ecologically sustainable stands in the Southern California high desert. Eventually, we plan to offer a series of herbal combination wands to satisfy the needs of even the most discriminating seekers. No matter what their constituents, however, smudge sticks will always appeal to a savvy demographic well-versed in both traditional Native American lore and alternative spiritual practice. Yet, the precise route these items take as they wend their circuitous way from Mother Nature to you is rarely described, let alone explained. It is for this reason that our staff often receives inquiries about the way quality smudge sticks are created, so I have dedicated today’s column to filling in those frustrating conceptual lacunae. 

Smudge Harvest

As some critics have rightly observed, it is terribly ironic that many who wish to pay homage to our benevolent Mother Earth inadvertently resort to approaches that ultimately exploit and decimate Her resources. Because our respect for the authentic Mother of All is profound, we have made a point of harvesting only herbs we have either personally cultivated or gathered after reverent study of local ecological systems. This study includes consultation with Native Americans who are both intimately familiar with local flora and directly involved with their conservation.

Each growing smudge stick herb is prayerfully taken at its seasonal peak, when the leaves are healthy, full-sized, open, fresh, moist, and available in abundance. We are careful to insure that every herbal stand is maintained for future growth and natural reproduction: none are ever destroyed or harvested past the point where easy regrowth is hampered.

Smudge Plaiting

Once the leaves are gathered, they are arranged for plaiting in bundles of varying sizes. Here the wands begin to assume their familiar tubular configuration. Plaiting is a skill that takes guidance to learn and much time to master. It is a genuine handicraft, and no artificially powered machines are ever employed in the process. Leaves are gently but firmly pressed together in a rotatory motion so as to create a uniform whorl from one end of the stick to another. The resultant wands, with the leaves already sticking well together, are then air-dried for several days in a special proprietary process unique to Lucky Six Farms. When they are finally hand-encircled with delicate spirals of all-natural thread, they readily yield to the augmented pressure so as form robust rods which combine maximum physical integrity with the range of characteristics required for smooth smoldering.

Considering the care that goes into the production of our smudge sticks, it is no wonder that they are often the first choice for Native American ceremonies, rites of magickal pilgrims, and New-Age practitioners worldwide!

By Alan Beck

 

Walk On The Wild Side

High Desert Animals - Where Are They?

Friends residing in typically urban or suburban environments of southern California often ask me whether I ever encounter high desert animals as I stroll through the stark, boulder-strewn acres of Lucky Six Farms. Their curiosity is certainly justified, since casual visitors remark that they observe no signs of mobile life even after spending hours trekking around our silent peaks and dark valleys. Of course, animal life is all around us here and in abundance too; it’s just a matter of being in the right place at the appropriate time to actually catch a glimpse of the creatures in action. I find it interesting, though, that the wildlife I spot often doesn’t quite match fauna documented for this area in books, monographs, and similar official publications. High desert animals can and do violate the rulebook because of the prevalence of micro-ecologies coexisting both within and between established, recognized regions.

High Desert Animals - Diurnal Dodgers

The great majority of animals regularly visible during our brilliant daylight hours are almost always on the run, sprinting from one hiding place - a burrow, thick brush, rock or tree hollow - to the next in order to efficiently dodge the keen vision of predatory birds, including red-tailed hawks (Buteo jamaicensis), ravens (Corvus corax) and even eagles (Aquila chrysaetos). The most-commonly observed members of this fleet-footed group are large ground squirrels (Spermophilus beecheyi) and cottontail rabbits (Sylvilagus audubonii). The former dig out extensive burrow systems where they live and raise their young and which the latter can make use of in a pinch when familiar four-legged carnivores like the coyote (Canis latrans) are detected nearby. While coyotes do hunt during the day, they are probably best slotted into the next activity category.

High Desert Animals - Crepusculars and Nocturnals

As our blazing sun dips beneath the jagged western horizon, a whole new bunch of creatures emerges from disparate shelters to forage or prey. Twilight is the preferred time for snakes to be up and about, particularly rattlesnakes (Crotalus sp.) and rubber boas (Charina bottae). Fortunately, the two are easy to differentiate - the viper’s multilobed tail and acutely-angled head are characteristic - so that rattlers may be readily moved to wilder environs while constrictors can simply be left to their own devices. And In the stygian depths of night it is possible to locate the barn owl (Tyto alba) by its mournful hoot and broad, plaintive face, while few sounds emanate from the Arroyo Toad (Anaxyrus californicus) as it waits unobtrusively and with infinite patience to take ultimate advantage of passing insects and spiders.

We are happy to note that all of our purifying aromatic products - essential oil, hydrosol, smudge bundles, cones, and whole leaves - are certified organic and thus intrinsically allied to vital natural forces which have forged this beautiful country and its resident wildlife.

By Alan Beck

 

White Sagecraft

Precious Gems Of Tradition

Just as we protect our most valuable possessions, we guard the sanctity of herbs, the precious gems of indigenous Southwestern tradition. One of our most talented Lucky Six Farms staffers derives his principal heritage from the Chiricahua Apache Nation, famous for outstanding chiefs like Cochise, Mangas Coloradas, and Geronimo. History testifies not only to their wisdom and courage in the face of overwhelming adversity but also their steadfast adherence to sacred traditions laid down long ago by ancestors who established profound bonds, both visionary and pragmatic, to Mother Earth. A superb craftsman and artist in his own right, he personally oversees the creation of our White Sage smudge bundles. His presence is made clearly manifest in every stage of production, from cultivation, through selection and ecologically sound harvest wherein plants may be utilized without undue damage, to actual hand manufacture of individual wands, large and small. As he inspects them with a critical yet loving eye, he often remarks that they are precious gems as much as diamonds and rubies.

Precious Gems Of Purity

While some might consider this type of evaluation fantastical or far-fetched, in reality it is not. White Sage is one of the very few plants frequently employed by Native Americans plus an enormous array of highly diverse alternative spiritual traditions for precisely the same purpose: quickly and effectively eliminating accumulated negative vibrations and replacing them with those characterized by energetic purity. Stringent requirements imposed by vision quests and serous psychic investigations into primordial noumena underlying the forces of Nature provided the impetus for Apaches and other original residents of what is now the Southwestern United States to identify and utilize the most potent vegetative resources available. White Sage (Salvia apiana) is perhaps first among these elite children of the soil, along with Cedar and Wild Tobacco.

Precious Gems Of Land And Psyche

Lucky Six Farms has long honored this ancient wisdom by wildcrafting, cultivating, and producing pure, certified organic White Sage products eminently suitable for authentic ceremonial purposes. Thus, customers from any and all traditions can and do use our essential oil, hydrosol, smudge bundles, cones, and leaves for rituals whenever and wherever natural purity is called for. We are thus proud to link our history and motives so closely with those who have preceded us on these Divinely blessed lands.


By Alan Beck

(Selling Your) Home Sweet Home

Psychic Dimensions Of Your Relocation Move

If you’re a typical American you will put down roots in an entirely new neighborhood, house, and home once every five years: that’s an incredible total of fifteen full relocation moves during an average lifetime. We’re proud of our easy mobility and rightly so, since it is a concrete illustration of the freedom we prize so dearly. But it would be naive to neglect the inevitable downsides to all the travel, change, and adaptation involved. Moving always entails at least a few briefly radical lifestyle alterations and often a great deal more. Add on the considerable additional expense and uncertainty of selling or renting your old digs, and you may well have a very challenging time merely coping with the situation. In fact, psychologists have shown that a relocation move actually ranks with traumatic incidents such as a relative’s demise in terms of induced stress, anxiety, and psychic upheaval!

Relocation Move - How The Pros Do It

If you’re presently looking forward to - or possibly dreading! - an impending move, Lucky Six Farms thinks you might want to take a few tips from real estate pros who traffic in houses and apartments with the same facility that we make small change at a cash register. One of the most distinctive hallmarks of their lucrative profession is the ease they feel in quickly selling even the most seemingly unappealing residence. They chuckle knowingly as they deposit their commissions even though the whole business seems incredibly chancy. How in the world can they be so confident of closing those deals? Their master key lies in always generating a highly positive first impression. Laypeople can understand that a marketable house should appear clean, bright, and uncluttered. However, only seasoned agents know of certain obscure secrets virtually assuring favorable first impressions and thus rapid sales.

Relocation Move - Clearing The Air

What kind of secret am I hinting at? The first significant impressions are literally imprinted into a potential home-buyer’s mind within their initial ten to fifteen seconds indoors. And the most basic, the most primordial, the most powerful impression does not come consciously via vision but rather enters subconsciously through the breath. The atmosphere (s)he inhales contains both an aroma and a psychic feeling: these will play the single most important role in determining how a prospective buyer interprets everything that follows!  Some of our good friends in the real estate business asked us not to reveal this simple secret, but we believe only our most savvy readers will actually put what’s implied here into practice. Need I note at this point that we have long specialized in highly potent, uniquely purifying, and psychically energizing White Sage products: essential oil, hydrosol, smudge bundles, cones, and whole leaves? May all your relocation moves prove pleasant and hassle-free!

By Alan Beck

Sounds Of Silence

Wisdom Without Words

Humanity in these post-modern times is gradually coming to appreciate the power of wordless wisdom. Perhaps this is a natural result of ubiquitous doublespeak, which has lamentably evolved into a primary mode of expression throughout academia, advertising, personal relations, and politics. When verbalized conceptualizations lose their hold on lived and living experience, the primordial energy of silence becomes overwhelmingly relevant. I am reminded of this fact virtually every day as I stroll across the rocky high desert acreage of Lucky Six Farms. Down every trail and every turn, I am confronted by silence so complete that it can only be characterized as awesome. And it is within the abyssal depths of that awe that a real wisdom gradually manifests.

Pure Wisdom Of Pure Nature

The grand workings of Mother Earth reverberate across that all-consuming quiet. Every sense strains forward in response. Her movements are slow and deliberate as the great granite boulders, some as large as a multistory building, populating the mountainsides. In this connection, it is fascinating to note how Native American Tribes believe even the stones here have souls and harbor feelings. Such sensitivity can only grow from the sheer force of ever-present silence and the patient calm it inevitably engenders in all who come to seek it out. On these sacred lands, even birdsong is rare, almost as if such notes were saved only for the most pressing communications and heartfelt outbursts. Animals seem fully as aware of the penetrating presence, the intense significance of silence as we humans.

Merging Self Into Wisdom

Like pieces of flotsam sinking beneath the mirrored surface of the sea, we find our egos, our pettiness, whatever of us that is not cosmic merging into the utterly imperturbable, the self-evident - and Biblical! - “I am.” Indeed, there is something profoundly divine in this uncanny desert silence. I believe this is because wisdom equals truth, and truth is necessarily distorted in the telling. Just as ineffably minute quanta cannot be touched or even investigated without changing their state, so the pressure of descriptive words chaotically warps the absolute, perfect state of true Being. For this reason, hermits and mystics of all faiths have sought the miraculous wisdom of silence. Hopefully, just a bit of this transcendent magick is conveyed through our purifying herbal products, which remain the most natural and direct expressions of Mother Earth’s peaceful fecundity.

By Alan Beck

Beneficial Blue

Lavender - The Cosmopolitan Herb

The three dozen or more species comprising Genus Lavandula - better known as Lavender - probably originated around the Mediterranean many thousands of years ago. However, appreciation of their numerous beneficial qualities soon brought these herbs into worldwide cultivation. While their common name was long believed to have derived from the Latin verb lavare, meaning to wash, it is now thought that their characteristic hue provided a more likely etymology via the Latin descriptive livere, that is, blueish. In any case, what The Bard famously noted of the rose’s archetypal scent certainly applies with equal or greater force to this gorgeously attractive and highly aromatic plant. And very soon, I am happy to announce, Lucky Six Farms will proudly offer Lavender as a principal component of select smudge wands.

Lavender - A Multistoried History

An entire volume could be penned documenting Lavender’s many and varied uses across the centuries. Its characteristically fragrant essential oil has long been a mainstay of classic perfumes, sachets, soaps, balms, and other popular products. In addition, it has been used to add color and a pleasantly light, sweet flavor to comestibles from cookies to cheese. During World War I, Lavender saw increasing employment in serious medicinal contexts. Tisanes and infusions were successful in providing relief from burns, wounds, and insect bites. From our point of view, however, Lavender’s most intriguing aspect lies in its well-documented ability to calm agitated minds and sooth jangled nerves. In particular, several modern clinical studies have shown it to act as a potent anxiolytic and promoter of sound, restful sleep.

Lavender - Smudge For A New Age

Wiccans, Neo-Pagans, and a range of New-Age spiritual seekers have found smudging with combination bundles of White Sage and Lavender to be powerfully conducive of deep meditative states. Such observations stand to reason, as White Sage is well-known for cleansing and purifying disruptive negative vibrations, and Lavender for supporting stable concentrative effort. Those who wish to observe the remarkable psychic effects of Lavender smudge for themselves can be assured that every component of our wands has been organically wild-crafted with the health of Mother Earth in mind.

By Alan Beck

 

The Holy Herb

Yerba Santa - Gift From The Earth

I’m pleased to announce that Yerba Santa (Eriodictyon californicum) will soon join Lucky Six Farms roster of elite aromatic products. Popular demand coupled with our perennial interest in making traditional gifts from our Mother Earth available worldwide have led us to introduce a number of new smudge bundled herbs. Foremost among these is the one most rapidly and enthusiastically embraced by clergy and soldiers of early Spanish missions. Calling this remarkable plant the Holy Herb, i.e. Yerba Santa, they quickly adopted long-standing Native American customs regarding its uses as a poultice, bronchial dilator, and stomachic. Its widespread ceremonial employment as a smudge, however, was largely ignored by European newcomers until twentieth century scholarship revived overdue respect for the profundity of indigenous wisdom. Yerba Santa is uniquely suited for generation of sacred smoke today just as it has been in ages past.

Yerba Santa - The Plant

Although Yerba Santa can be found growing naturally throughout much of the Western United States, it is most commonly encountered on high, moderately arid elevations of Southern California and Northern Mexico. Vigorous exemplars can reach up to four feet high. Stands in this sun-drenched Southwestern range are reputably the most potently aromatic; their showy, trumpet-shaped, light lavender flowers and elongated, sticky leaves make for ready identification, especially when prolific blooms appear with the approach of summer. Besides the familiar californicum, several other varieties, including the Hairy Yerba Santa (E. trichocalyx), the Thick Leaved (E. crassifolium), and the Lompoc (E. capitatum) are known.

Yerba Santa - Sacred Intermediary

We anticipate offering Yerba Santa as both stand-alone smudge bundles and in combination with other venerated herbs such as White Sage. Smoldered in this fashion, it has often been regarded as a powerful activator of the deep psyche and intermediary to beneficial spiritual powers. Thus, enhanced abilities like clairvoyance, predictive dreaming, and telepathy are supposedly promoted through the intelligent and prudent use of Yerba Santa smudge. A number of prominent Central American shamans and practitioners of folk magick have opined that Yerba Santa smoke makes the entire range of altar offerings more conspicuously attractive for noumenal intelligences. As with all our White Sage products, the Yerba Santa we will provide is always wild-crafted and organically cultivated for Earth-friendliness and optimal effect.


By Alan Beck

White Sage Medicine Wheel

Color Symbolism - The Circle Of Life

For those whose careers are intimately bound up with the gorgeous landscape of our American Southwest, medicine wheel color symbolism gradually evolves into much more than a sterile anthropological exercise. At Lucky Six Farms, we are acutely aware of how the high desert home of our White Sage products reveals wonders and mysteries inherent in these key hues at every turn. There is good reason for this, of course. In one form or another the medicine wheel is respected by virtually every indigenous Native American culture simply because it is a concrete manifestation of the circle of life itself and thus embodies inescapable aspects of human existence. The wheel assigns color symbolism to each of the four cardinal directions, embracing the entire spectrum of both individual and societal concerns.

Color Symbolism - Growth And Balance

While medicine wheel correspondences between directions and shades may vary somewhat from Tribe to Tribe, the colors themselves have remained constant for centuries along with their principal attributions. Progress along or through the quadrants parallels life’s journey and our concomitant growth in specific facets of vital wisdom. In addition, each section illuminates the kind of balance necessary for us to reach maturity in that specific regard. We usually commence the medicine wheel cycle with the color red, symbolizing birth. Interestingly, this hue also stands for the spiritual per se, without which life itself could not unfold. The staff at Lucky Six Farms often sees this color glowing on the eastern horizon just at dawn, heralding arrival of our characteristically brilliant sun.

The color yellow is usually associated with burgeoning youth, the period of quickest and most evident development for our bodies and minds. Yellow also represents emotion, which is at its most volatile and intense at this stage, stamping indelible marks on our personalities. Many new shoots, including White Sage, show brief bursts of yellow as they push their way up from the dark soil into the light of day.

Color Symbolism - Metaphysics At Work

Full maturation is symbolized through black. As science observes, all the colors of the spectrum are fully absorbed by black, just as authentic maturity implies that we have assimilated and understood all the variegated lessons taught through the classroom of personal experience. In addition, black embodies physicality since it is the most stolid and uncompromising of all. Black shows absolute fullness, a state of perfect balance unmoved throughout even the greatest challenges.

Last but certainly not least is white, color of both death and the intellect. Our discriminating faculties abstract and denature isolated aspects of life even as they enable manipulative understanding of them. Just because death is an inevitable part of living, intellect should never be employed obsessively or exclusively. At Lucky Six Farms, we observe that most plants assume a plain white hue when their vivifying juices have departed for the last time. It is fascinating to note that White Sage leaves, at the peak of its their life cycle display none of these colors. Instead, they assume a luminous blue-green, hues traditionally assigned to transcendent wisdom and perfect harmony. We fervently hope our White Sage products - essential oil, hydrosol, smudge bundles, cones, and whole leaves - convey those properties wherever they are dispatched across the face of our Mother Earth.

By Alan Beck

Samhain Sensibilities

Natural Resources - An Ancient View

Natural resources weren’t always commodities to be bought and sold. Take Halloween for example: a natural resource of time and space. Although our 2012 Halloween festivities have come and gone, the staff of Lucky Six Farms knows this unofficial holiday’s raison d’etre has only just begun. Halloween marks an important seasonal shift, and its roots extend deep into a Celtic past, when a large portion of Western Europeans gleaned their livelihood from an intimate understanding of and concomitant cooperation with Mother Earth. In fact, the familiar October 31 date of our Halloween - an abbreviation of All Hallows Eve - marks the approximate period in our planet’s solar cycle when Samhain was celebrated. As conspicuous midpoint between autumnal equinox and winter solstice, Samhain drew young and old together to ceremonially close the harvest season and prepare for the cold, dark half of the year. Group and individual purification inevitably followed to insure that psychic natural resources were appropriately attuned to accord with the prevailing temporal ones.

Noumena As Natural Resources

But why were rites of purification considered so very important during Samhain that they were practically obligatory? As with all uniquely liminal times, significant transitions of this kind heralded natural phase shifts in consciousness. Peculiarly charged emotions long closed off would spring open and vice versa. Thus, Samhain was considered, above all, as not simply a mindless tick-off of a cold, calendric division but rather a portal opening quite literally and directly to the Otherworld. Spirits of the departed, elves, fairies, elementals, and angelic beings both celestial and fallen suddenly secured access to the affairs of mundane life. Like a life-giving shower of rain or a devouring yet proteinaceous cloud of locusts, this avalanche of noumena required insightful management if the social fabric was to remain intact. To deal effectively with natural resources of this kind required an especially clear head coupled with unwavering physical resolve, an energized intellect supported by calm nerves. Given these facts, ceremonial purification became the order of the day.

Our White Sage Products - Uniquely Purifying Natural Resources

Gaelic peoples often pursued psychic purification by passing between two specially constructed bonfires. In fact, the close association of fire and aromatic fumigation with psychic cleansing extends well back into the prehistory of virtually every continent and indigenous society. Native Americans utilized smudging with White Sage for exactly the same end. Our certified organic products - essential oil, hydrosol, smudge bundles, cones, and whole leaves - continue this venerable tradition. We know they will prove remarkably efficacious, as they always have, throughout the winter ahead.


By Alan Beck

 

Culture's Heavy Cart

Juggernaut - The Symbol

Can you recognize a juggernaut? The other day a member of our Lucky Six Farms staff pulled a crumbled piece of paper she had found lying on the ground from her coat pocket and spread it out before me on a table. I recognized the displayed line drawing at once: it was the first-ever smiley face. No, I don’t mean the 1963 version penned by commercial artist Harvey Ball. I’m referring instead to the redoubtable image of Jagannath, Lord of the World, venerated for countless centuries in his temple at Puri, India and elsewhere. Scholars of British India were quick to give this cheerful divine visage some very bad press. In particular, they claimed that devotees would throw themselves beneath the immense wheels of his huge cart as it was pulled by countless celebrants from one place to another during the deity’s annual festival. Thus, Jagannath soon morphed into our colloquial juggernaut, transmogrifying a traditionally creative avatar into a thoroughly modern, implacably malevolent force.

Juggernaut - The Reality

It is no wonder the concept of juggernaut conveys such trendy resonance. One of the most important founts of today’s social anomie lies in a pervasive feeling of impotence, a conviction of utter personal irrelevance. Social, political, and economic powers appear too immense to offer any reasonable handhold for the individual, who is seemingly cast adrift on a dwindling raft of his own meager resources. Even organized religion, long a solid bastion of uplifting material and moral support for even the most benighted, appears to have succumbed to the ponderous immobility of its own affluence. There is, of course, a terrible irony in all this, for only a truly great culture could have finally grown so immensely powerful that it is no longer capable of providing material, intellectual, or emotional shelter to the frail, foible-ridden individual human beings who are its sole constituents.

Juggernaut - Alternatives, Old And New

My regular readers can undoubtedly see where these observations are heading. The impressive interest in and concomitant growth of both traditional and alternative spiritual paths during the last half-century provide eloquent testimony to the incredible resilience of the human spirit. We believe humanity can soar high above our hidebound juggernaut, far beyond our culture’s tragically overburdened cart. By offering reasonably-priced, pure, certified organic White Sage products - essential oil, hydrosol, smudge bundles, cones, and whole leaves - we actively cater to this trend. May all our customers and clients thereby benefit from a perennial source of uplifting energy!

By Alan Beck

 

Serpents Of Lucky Six Farms

Myths and Legends - A Gift Of Culture

Snakes play important parts in myths and legends worldwide. We have a chance to observe them first-hand as several types are frequent visitors to the expansive White Sage fields of Lucky Six Farms and their adjacent high desert acres. We never molest them, as we value their vital place in our local ecology, specifically their role in organic pest control. But we respect their other connections, too, the mythic and spiritual ones which reflect realities other than strictly mundane and material ones. Indigenous southern California Tribes held that, in vanished ages, a great serpent had come from the depths of the sea, taken up residence on land, and was killed by people who had been rudely displaced by his intrusion. As his huge body burned up, smoldering pieces landed and immediately transformed into various cultural components, like knowledge of fire-making and ceremonial protocols. Thus, all subsequent myths and legends here ultimately derive from the serpent.

Myths and Legends - Serpent Symbology

Stories of this kind are rooted in primordial symbology, a graphic language capable of speaking to the deepest, most dynamic regions of our psyche. On virtually every continent, serpents represent certain vital interfaces between human civilization and the untamed forces of nature. It is especially common to see serpents or serpent spirits as guardians of hidden treasure or special knowledge. Standing as intermediaries between humanity and the potent unknown, they must be completely overpowered or understood and diplomatically courted for their secrets to be ultimately accessed. In a similar vein, it was none other than Albert Einstein who asserted, “Nature is subtle, but she is not malicious.”

Myths and Legends - Serpents As Nature Personified

Perhaps the most popular legends regarding snakes have them representing principal natural forces which manifest highly dichotomous effects on our lives. Intimately aligned with winds and water, these serpentine entities can bring life-giving rain or devastating floods, refreshing breezes or ruinous storms. Finally, and most importantly, serpents embody the notion of perennial rebirth and resurrection, ideas which have supported spiritual insights and commitments since time immemorial.  We are proud to note our pure, certified White Sage products - essential oil, hydrosol, smudge bundles, cones, and whole leaves - provide open avenues through which we can all perceive our own personal connections to the life and love empowering all of our natural world.

By Alan Beck