Cleopatra

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Lavender is so sensational & surely the ideal essential oil to have around anytime but especially to be more tranquil during a Dark Moon. Or you can tear sprigs off & put them in your pillowcase & this is the most amazing recipe for Lavender muffins.  Lavender comes from the Latin ‘lavandas’ – things to be washed, probably because Ancient Romans knew how fab & tranquility inducing it is to bung in with the laundry. It’s a.k.a Elf Leaf and Nard. As the latter, it is mentioned in the Song Of Solomon.

Lavender is a herb of of Mercury & Air. Mercury is Messenger of the Gods. It’s thus so appropriate that it is Lavender/Elf-Leaf that actually started modern aromatherapy. Rene Maurice Gattefosse was working in a perfume lab when he burned his hand and – intuitively or just in pain – plunged it into a beaker of pure lavender oil. The hand healed beautifully and voila; aromatherapy. All because of lovely lavender.

A few drops of the oil on your temples is ultra-calming & sprinkled on sheets if you’re restless at night, ditto. They say that asps – the snakes – like to sleep in lavender bushes, which makes me think of Cleopatra. Maybe the asp wasn’t in her bowl of fruit but actually in the lavender bought in for her bath? Only she would have called it Nard, of course.

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“…coins and statues have been discovered at a cemetery near of the Temple of Taposiris Magna in Egypt, a possible site for the remains of Antony and Cleopatra. Last month, it used radar to find three deep shafts leading to three “spots of interest” under the temple, the Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities said….More here.

Antony And Cleopatra

Together they stood watching on the terrace
As Egypt fell asleep under a stifling heaven
And the Nile rolled its fatness down to cleave
Its own black delta, to Sais or to Bubastis

The Roman soldier, now a prisoner caught
Nursing a sleepy child, under the weight of his cuirass
Feels the luxurious body he embraces
Bend and give way on his triumphant heart.

Turning her face, pale in brown hair, to meet
This man half-drunk on her invincible scents,
Now she holds up her mouth and her clear eyes.

Bent over her, the Imperator sees
In her wide pupils starrd with golden points
An immeasurable sea with ships in flight.

by Jose-Maria De Heredia