STREGONERIA, NETTLES, and the SEASON of MOTHERS
Spring Forage and Tarot Reading with The Forest of Enchantment Tarot by Lunaea Weatherstone
Mondays are my writing days - a sacred day for me, with no one-on-one healing sessions to perform and the children off at school, I have precious time to let creativity flow. However, this Monday I’m feeling too brain-foggy and fatigued to write much, so I’m puttering in the kitchen and garden instead.
It was an intense weekend for me with some heavy new moon energy and a severe multi-day migraine set against a backdrop of relentless cold rain - all of which dashed my big gardening plans and generally made me feel miserable. Astrologers are predicting a tough couple weeks of this intensity as we pass through this particular eclipse season combined with mercury retrograde. There has also been record high solar flare activity this past week, which always seems to trigger terrible, medication-resistant migraines for me. Ugh. I’m not an astrologer, but my experience, sensory awareness and intuition tell me that many people are feeling the weight of some heavy energy and/or experiencing high conflict, tension, blocks and resistance right now. Yet somehow knowing we are not alone in struggle doesn’t bring much relief, does it?
What does bring me some relief is in my favorite spring wild green: nettles. Cosmic forces may be working against us, but it’s nettles season so at least there’s that. My mood may be precariously low today, but I still managed to make it outside in the brief window between heavy rains to snip several baskets of fresh nettles — my first harvest of the season. I can’t describe how therapeutic it was for me to participate in this little spring ritual of wild greens harvest but I’d like to share what came out of the thirty or so minutes in the garden and how it shaped my thoughts.
Urtica dioica is abundant on the farm property where I now live, in an intentional community in Vermont that I joined last summer. This might be the first year in a long time that I don’t have to purchase dried nettles in bulk to keep up with my infusion consumption. It feels like a big sigh of relief to have access to an abundance of land again — something that I took for granted as a child growing up in a rural area, and something I have struggled to recreate and sustain in my adult life. Today, seeing my green growing friends popping up all over the fields and garden beds around the hundreds of acres we steward — the violets, the dandelions, the little fresh dock leaves, the celandine and clover and so many familiar ol’ medicinal weeds friends — I felt supported and blessed once again. Even the residual ache in my head seemed to ease a little as I knelt to snip and pick and sigh, my nervous system relaxing in a return to the joy of earth.
I felt inspired and uplifted enough from the forage to pull some cards from my new favorite deck — The Forest of Enchantment Tarot by Lunaea Weatherstone. The cards reflected back to me in a very straightforward way the challenges and frustrations of the weekend giving way to the abundance of spring energy. I saw the energy shift mirrored back at me in the images and smiled. Sitting there at my kitchen island with my cards and my baskets of nettles, I felt like I was living the fantasy of little Italian Nona hovering over her stove and chanting her prayers to the blessed mother at the same time — another magical achievement unlocked!
My inspiration today is largely derived from the content of a new course on Italian Witchcraft that I’m taking with herbalist and witch Lisa Fazio of The Root Circle school. Last week’s class discussion on Benedicaria and Stregoneria got me thinking about the many ordinary ways mothers (especially strongly Catholic mothers, like mine) pass down folk medicine and witchcraft, or Stregoneria, unconsciously through everyday activities that center on the kitchen and garden.
Reading about Italian folk medicine traditions reminds me of my mother, even though she is not Italian. In my memories of childhood, I see my mother always in front of the stove, and always talking. She talked to herself a lot when she was preparing food. She also talked on the phone almost nonstop, and the long spiraling phone cord would wrap several times around the kitchen island as she talked one of her friends through a life crisis while chopping potatoes and stirring whatever she was assembling on the stove. Multitasking was her way of life. When she wasn’t on the phone, I recall that she also talked out loud to the food itself, encouraging it to come together, or commanding it outright to hurry up, as we always seemed to be in a rush or running late as the dinner hour approached. And always, there was the icon of the Madonna and child overhead, one in each room of the home.
In my household my dad was the gardener, but my mom was the great appreciator of the flowers he grew. “Johnny Jump Up” violets were one of her favorites, as were tulips. With seven children, a household, and a million other responsibilities she took on, she didn’t have time to tend the garden, but she taught me to love flowers like angelic beings. She always made time to remark upon and delight in the natural beauty that grew all around us between other tasks. She talked to them, too.
I’m not entirely sure why I was reminiscing about these things as I picked nettles today — about my mother, about how the Catholic faith seemed to act as a transmission vessel for older folk medicine traditions, and how those magical traditions seem to persist through mothers in unconscious, unintentional ways. Maybe it’s the approaching Mother’s Day holiday, and the familiar rhythm of the spring nettles harvest that’s got me considering seasonal rituals in a new way. I wonder what inherited rites my children will find themselves compulsively performing when they are all grown up. Will they feel driven to forage spring greens around the 1st of May? Or will they forget/reject all the folklore and botany and order a pizza, remembering only my migraines and my dark moods?
A true Benedetta (female practitioner of Benedicaria or indigenous Italian spiritual culture), my mother would never EVER call herself a Strega. She is unwavering in her devotion to the Church and the Catholic faith. And yet much to her disappointment, none of the important, church-sanctioned dogma seemed to stick with me. I can barely remember the Lord’s Prayer and I haven’t stepped foot in a confessional or a communion line since my confirmation at age 14. But the rituals, the seasonal celebrations, the altar-tending, the devotion to prayer as practice, and yes, a good dose of unnecessary shame did stick. She might be horrified to know that it was mostly the rebelliousness and patriarchy-defying witchcraft-between-other-tasks that I absorbed from my Catholic mother. The subconscious ability to bring the sacred into being through spontaneous word, attention, song, or presence within nature, with plants, within the home. The charms and the chants and the amulets. The everyday Stregoneria.
These were the things I pondered as I brought my forage baskets inside and tried to decide what to make with all the nettles I had just harvested. True that Urtica dioica is powerful medicine to treat many health conditions like allergies, anemia, inflammation, gout, hormone imbalances, kidney issues, skin aliments to name a few, but he best thing about freshly foraged spring greens is the depth of flavor and nutrient density they lend to any culinary dish. Staring at the piles on my counter, I didn’t feel up for an ambitious recipe. I felt uplifted in spirit, but I was still so drained from the migraine.
What would my mother make, I wondered. A little Irish lady with almost no culinary tradition or mothering of her own to fall back on, she liked her recipes simple and wholesome, with very few seasonings. Her dishes were basic, but still a far cry from the cheap canned food she grew up on. She cooked out of necessity, but she poured her creative energy into other things — holidays and birthday parties, her religious community and her spiritual studies, earning a Doctorate in Catholic Theology while I was in High School.
As I thought about it, I realized my mother wouldn’t make anything with nettle. She would probably be suspicious of nettles altogether. No, she would spend this time writing. She would cook up some word magic.
So, I sat down to write, my head a little clearer thanks to the nettle tea, and here is the memory that came to me: When I made my first communion, my godfather gave me a Book of Psalms. I read it, cover to cover, because I wanted to understand how to be good. I did not find the answer in the pages of that book, but I did soak in some of the cadences and rhythms of the psalm poetry, which is often quite beautiful and lyrical.
In honor of all the mothers who knowingly or unknowingly practice Benedicaria, here is my take on a nettles-infused psalm — a little Scongiuri (magic word formula for conjuring) that I cooked up instead of cooking today:
Hymn to Nettles
Blessed are the Nettles for they revive the weary soul.
First strong stalks of spring, fortify the fibers of my spirit.
Make steady my blood and entrain my will to your greening.
Protect my soft places with your piercing swords.
I ask you, O Sweet stinging Nettle-friend, enrich my life.
I think I will throw the nettles from today’s harvest in the dehydrator to keep for tea. Easy-peasy because this mom is tired on this Monday afternoon.
No matter how busy your life is this week and what kind of challenges you’re facing, if you make a little time to go forage some nettles this week, I promise you will feel a little better. Wear gloves, and don't be shy. Old folk tales tell us the nettle plant’s sting is worse if you try to be gentle. Grab those leaves with intention. And if you have more energy than me, go crazy and try one of those delicious recipes that are always floating around social media this time of year. I know my social media feed is full of beautiful and complex looking culinary accomplishments from herbalists out there who love nettles even more than I do. Some of these dishes look so freaking good.
I’ve tried a lot of great nettle recipes over the years, like nettle pesto, nettle-potato-leek soup, nettle lasagna, nettle gnocchi — these are all delicious, highly recommended ways to use fresh nettles, but I think my favorite is just to keep it simple with tea or sautéed with some butter and garlic.
Nettles with Butter and Garlic
4-6 cups chopped fresh nettle tops
2 tablespoons of butter
2 cloves garlic
Pinch black or red pepper
Put a little olive oil in a pan and bring it to low heat. Add the pepper, butter and garlic and let the butter infuse with the garlic for about 2-5 min, being careful not to burn it.
Add the nettles and a little water. Stir to coat the leaves in the butter and then cover. Cook for about 10 minutes until the nettles are soft, like spinach.
Make sure you speak to the nettles, out loud, while you chop and sauté. Ask them for what you need, and command them, nicely, to comply. You just may find they do.
Happy nettles season and Mother’s Day to all you wild, prickly witches :)
