The day I gathered the wort was the day the cat killed three mice and I had to test drive my car after yet another repair. The day the sun was hiding and I had anxiety that had no place to go. I felt shy, being along a popular walking path - but that is where the plant was, so that’s where I found myself.
Many herbalists will advise that the flowers of St John’s wort are to be preserved for midwinter, when we can take out our jars of sunshine and apply the medicine at the darkest point in the year. And yet midwinter is the rebirth of the sun, a time of hope. At midsummer, around St John’s day, when we gather the flowers, as blazing as the sun may be it brings with it the promise of the darkness. The darkness is implicit in the turning of the wheel. This is as good as it’s going to get - it’s all downhill from here.
It seems to me that depression is often a fear of movement. How does midsummer feel to those of us who feel safer in a cosy nook, whose response to feeling exposed is often to freeze or hide? What is it about the sun that illuminates and reveals the shadows? We are afraid of being seen, perhaps of ending up like poor St John whose flaming dedication to love and truth, to revealing the shadows in the world, lost him his head.
When I learned about the indigenous practice of swallowing the sun, it took me back to my childhood where I would open my mouth instinctively and swallow down the sun’s rays. I had forgotten until that moment. When you’re depressed they ask you, how long since you lost interest in the things you used to love? For a lot of us we lost these things in childhood, when we did something magical for the last time, although we didn’t know they were the last time.
When gathering plants, pay attention to how you feel and what is growing alongside it. For the feelings will reveal what the medicine is, deeper than what you can read in a book. It’s common, for example, to see plantain alongside nettle, the remedy for the injury side by side. I gazed in wonder at all the baby oaks growing around the sunshine herb. It is surprisingly difficult to grow an oak if you’ve ever tried, needing to judge when it's had enough shelter and nurturing and can now be transplanted outside. That is part of the reason they are so magnificent. Something so delicate and fragile growing into something so strong and enduring. Yet here they were, thriving with the help of St John.
St John’s wort, for the anxiety that comes from being seen. For reclaiming joy and childlike wonder in the things you used to love. For the person who feels fragile as a baby oak but whose core is solid and unwavering.
With love.
