Druid Plant Oracle - Garlic

Well, we talked about having a Druid Plant Study Group so I decided to just draw a card and do it sort of as and when (as and when I remember to draw and post something lol)

So Garlic, the wild ramsons garlic whos sent fills those little 'fairy glen' type places in nature. walking down the track and your legs brush against a whole patch of wild garlic and your clothes, hair and everything smells of its perfume. (yes the smell is PERFUME not icky garlic.. I love garlic).

Garlic is a great cleansing plant, it cleans our bodies of infections, makes our blood and heart healthy and does so much good for us, that its not so crazy to think it could cleanse our souls from the infections of death, like vampires and other ghost and ghoulies.

The trees and leaves, even the sunlight to me suggest autumn, around the autumn equinox when our bodies are getting ready for winter, and when we need that boost to fight off those coming coughs and colds! So Garlic protects and cleanses us, its a plant of prevention is better than cure, although it'll help cure a few things too! hehe. I love the sunshine this card, our skin catching those last golden drops of sunshine before the dark months take hold and our souls seem starved of the sun.

It seems odd to me that a plant of such cleansing and protective qualities isnt thought of as a psychic plant. Usually ones that cleanse us, or help our bodies are great 'seeing' herbs. But now i've written that, I get a feeling that Garlic isnt a seeing herb, it works purely to help, to perserve and protect. Garlic knows its strengths and weaknesses very keenly, and so perhaps another part of this plant's energy is to keep an eye that we doing things that stick to our strengths and weaknesses, rather than assuming we know them?

I'd love to hear others thoughts on it

I'm going to write a few things about my impressions of the whole card image.

The water suggest to me that things are in movement (which fits with the cleansing properties of garlic inanna_tarot has mentioned). The heap of rocks (a wall?) makes me think of how garlic often serves to keep people apart - either because they don't like the smell or because they're afraid others might not like it. So it's about barriers to me. The big trees in the warm golden light feel nurturing and strengthening to me. Protection comes to mind (which, again, fits with what inanna_tarot already said about garlic as vampire prevention etc.). The plant itself has starry flowers with cores in groups of three (I don't know the correct terms for all the plant parts in English), which lets me think of getting together in groups, possibly to celebrate something - and eat tasty food with garlic. The leaves look like the leaves of snowdrops, so the plants could be easily confused if one didn't get close enough to smell them. So the whole distance vs. getting together/close topic seems to run through the whole card.

I don't know anything about the medical or other properties of the plant (and what I know has already been mentioned), so this is my first impression. Maybe there'll be more once I've gotten the card in a reading.

I used to have a lot of wild garlic in my garden - it has the prettiest flower...but I have to admit that I pulled a lot of it up as the scent was truly overwhelming and the plants spread rapidly when given the chance!

I love garlic but I now realise that it is a very strong plant and is only beneficial to me in small doses... Maybe it suggests that too much of a good thing can be detrimental.

OK so I'm rambling...

Oh dinah, ramble away! I ramble all the time, and sometimes, mid ramble I say something interesting... well sometimes lol.

I want to do some research later today about the differences between clove garlic, garlic chives and wild garlic. Want to sort of play with it without smelling too much lol.

Well I did some reading and the bulb garlic that we use for cooking is very strong and can be an abrasive energy... that sort of overpowers and cleanses everything rather than that selective energy of the Wild Garlic.

But the Ramsons garlic is rather gentle and easier to use in cooking because its the leaves rather than the bulb you use, and its smell and taste isnt as pungent or overwhelming. Like the difference between a cleansing rain shower or a storm and flash flooding lol. So with the stream and the golden autumn I can see wild garlics energy as a very soothing process of cleansing and refining what we do and what we want out of life.

I like this card so so much. I just want to sit in that woodland all day long