Turning The Wheel Of The Year

Weather Sets The Mood

Our weather, in the stark but lovely shadow of Madre Grande, is never just ordinary. Spring and summer are marked by long weeks of cloudless skies. The sun’s face then is uncompromisingly radiant, so by noon even large boulders are seared to the point where they are painful to touch. Such climate creates an archetypal high desert so familiar to those who explore the American southwest. But there is a slow, primordial rhythm at work behind the scenes, a planetary yin and yang which becomes obvious only as the wheel of the year revolves past its zenith. Fall sets in suddenly, so precipitously in fact, that even savvy residents are caught unaware. In the course of a single day, our weather turns sullen, dark, and cool.

The Weather of Reminiscence

In September, we wake to a pea-soup fog so thick a paltry distance of twenty feet recedes into infinity. Creepy dampness, reminiscent of a haunted house rather than a bright desert, fills every nook and cranny of what was, only hours before, clear, crisp openness. Our thoughts respond appropriately, of course, moving into realms of past foibles and triumphs, recollecting actions taken in the heat of the moment that have long  banked into lifeless embers. As night descends, the atmosphere becomes stranger still. Unmoving fog weighs down the land with palpable moisture, embracing us in its crypt-like, stygian depths. Without a bright flashlight, travel outdoors is impossible, for we are now blind as those eyeless fish who spend their days endlessly swimming through subterranean pools.

Our White Sage Energy Transcends The Weather

Our fields of organic White Sage, the pride of Lucky Six Farms, must also lie quiet in this eerily silent interregnum, like the other indigenous life-forms. Initiates into the Mysteries of old knew this liminal time well, for the fulcrum of the year reminds us of the frightening darkness into which we all descend, steadfast in our faith of renewed life. Although winter has not yet begun, we are confident of the invisible, vibrant stirrings just beneath the soil - and of the carefully stored fruits of our labor. Our work insures that the heart of the White Sage spirit, the very essence of purifying energy, never vanishes. It remains accessible across even the bleakest horizons for those who know and care.

By Alan Beck

  

Desert Mindfulness

The Good, The Pure, The True

Our conception of ultimate good has always been closely aligned with that of absolute purity. And there are fewer places on Earth more thoroughly pure than the desert. Historically and mythically the desert is a special place: all mainstream Western faiths have found their origins there. Spend some days and nights in any desert and you’ll soon understand why! An almost unbearably intense clarity pervades land and sky, a luminosity redolent of divine things and holy epiphanies. Although little physical movement is evident, the air vibrates with palpable life. Since the dawn of civilization, mystics, saints, hermits, and truth-seekers have looked to the desert as a reliable haven wherein profound religious silence and spontaneous illumination could be experienced. Symbolically, deserts reflect the primordial condition of our deep mind when freed from obscuring idle chatter and kaleidoscopic delusion. In the desert we can easily focus our attention on our ever-present, still core - the wellspring of all that is good and true - which is a direct emanation of our Higher Self.

Good Comes From The Desert

Lucky Six Farms’ purifying White Sage, Salvia apiana, has always been an integral part of the southern California high desert. Native Americans have long seen it as embodying active purity itself. We cultivate it organically, deliberately rejecting petrochemicals or synthetic fertilizers so its growth is fully in accord with the energetic currents of nature. In addition, we insist that 100% of the processing and packaging of our products - essential oils, hydrosols, smudge bundles, cones, and whole leaves - takes place in the very same sacred environment. By wild-crafting and preparing the White Sage we deliberately engage its unique spirit, an intelligent energy that simultaneously calms the body while energizing the intellect.

Doing Good Through White Sage

Our daily interaction with both desert and White Sage thus becomes a true exercise in mindfulness and a tribute to the good residing in each and every heart. Plant, person, and place merge into One. By actively bringing that uniquely uplifting essence to the world via the Internet, we strive to further humanity’s progress and empower its highest ideals.

By Alan Beck

Back to the Future

Our Holistic View

A holistic perspective on life is, in reality, the most thoughtful and mature. Bombarded by manipulative exhortations to compartmentalize all facets of existence and even ourselves, we forget how to prioritize needs, wants, and goals. For example, our immediate environment carries enormous influence on the way we feel and the work we accomplish. Beautiful surroundings tend to elevate our thoughts and inspire creativity, while ugly areas often lower expectations, arousing anxiety and base instincts. But do such obvious effects imply even more significant connections between the spaces where we live out our lives and the most profound roots of our being? Most of us at Lucky Six Farms would enthusiastically reply in the affirmative. How can we justify such an uncompromisingly holistic approach?

Our Holistic History

We wild-craft authentic White Sage only in the tiny region of the world which is its natural home: the stark, rocky high deserts of extreme southern California and northern Mexico. In the past, remote tribes throughout the Continent sought out White Sage as a rare commodity, exchanging valuable goods to obtain even small amounts. Recent archaeological work has shown human society in these celestially austere White Sage grounds goes back at least ten-thousand years. We didn't have to wait for these findings to be scientifically confirmed, though. Our active continuity with Native American culture is evident every day we walk this land, laboring to bring forth the purifying power which emanates from it and testifies to its heritage.

Our Holistic Products

Lucky Six Farms understands that past and present, ancient wisdom and modern insight, dynamically unite in every one of our products. Our essential White Sage oils, hydrosols, smudge bundles, cones, and whole leaves are as dramatically effective today as they were a hundred centuries ago. Energizing the mind as it calms the body, White Sage is a signal child of this remarkable region of North America. We feel privileged to extend its blessings, venerable as Mother Earth herself, to every corner of today's complex world.


By Alan Beck