Your ancestors were medicine people: a bay leaf ritual
our recent ancestors were probably medicine people and didn't know it.
I want to take the opportunity to say that using plants as a spritual/physical practice is not such a mysterious thing. Your grandmother probably knew garlic was going to fight off a virus. A friend recently told me his mother always put garlic in the hands of my father and his father before they would get on planes to Vegas and instructed them to keep them on them at all times to keep them well, safe, protected. This was in the 1980s.
Your great grandmother probably used garlic or rosemary in her cooking with ancestral memory that she was making magic, medicine. Your great great grandmother or grandfather probably gathered wild greens from outside and made a decotto from them to ease a cough or cold or put on sore joints. This was just our ways.
You may or may not remember any of them doing this work. But they did it.
Take a moment to remember.
Even if you know you have no "real" memory — visualize an elder at the stove or at the table creating something with a plant. Were they making an amulet to stuff in their bra? Were they stuffing leaves and garlic cloves in honey? Where they collecting the tops and roots of dandelions and fermenting them in their basement?
Digg deep into a memory, trust it.
What do you think your recent dead used as plants? Tell that story. Let that story be passed on to you. You don't need to reclaim this. Just know it's already in you.
Our recent and ancient ancestors used bay leaves for so many things: to flavor, to repel, to release, and in spells.
Our recent ancestors probably dropped them in gravy, soups and pasta sauces. And we are going to bring them to the spirit of smoke. This is a full moon ritual, but like most things you can really do it whenever you feel called. I was passed on this act/ritual by elders to use when the possibility of energy attachments or “malocchio” or “bad eye” was being felt. Or it can be used when you are offering, or asking to receive. We set the intention behind it and the bay does the job for us.
Each bay leaf can hold a name of someone or the word of something you want to invoke or be done with. The bay leaf spirit is the ancestor that communicates our needs on earth to God and the Saints and our ancestral guides.
The bay leaf can banish unwanted energy. The bay leaf can break the curses we hold, the ancestral curses that have been placed upon us.
Before you begin, get some paper and jot down what you want to: invoke, banish, and any curses you want to break. You are writing to the gods.
You will need:
Pen
Dried bay leaves
Matches or a lighter
Candle
Fire-proof dish (glass, ceramic, a cauldron, etc.)
A quick note:
Bay leaves can take a while to burn, so please make sure you set aside some time for this ritual - don't rush it.
Ritual:
Light your candle and pause a moment to take in the flame.
Call in any ancestors, guides, angels, gods, etc. you think will provide assistance during this ritual.
Using what you wrote down on the previous page, take a pen and write a word or symbol on each bay leaf to represent. You can either write one word/symbol per leaf or several - there is no "right" or "wrong" way to do this.
When you're ready, take your dish and use the flame of the candle to burn each leaf in prayer and spell. Your dish is there to catch the ashes.
Burn as much as the leaf as possible, taking in the smoke and allowing it to be the messenger to the ancestral gods of justice, healing, liberation, and protection.
After you have burned your leaves, end the ritual by saying a short prayer for release and thanks, ending it with "Amen”
Return the ash to the earth, and leave a small offering in gratitude. Or save some ash as protection to keep on an altar, in a scapular bag, etc.