Selecting Essential Oils from the Shamanic Perspective
By Kathryn Sharp
It is possible to work successfully with essential oils from a purely academic mindset. In this instance, one uses information based on the science and chemistry of aromatherapy, to select essential oils for different conditions and purposes. I have seen this work well for many people.
But this was never enough for me. Having spent years immersed in Native American culture, I knew about the Great Mystery. The Great Mystery is the field of pure potentiality, which contains all things.
Some things are manifest in the physical world, but many more are not presently manifest. Yet all things that ever existed or ever could exist, are already present in the field of potentiality, or Great Mystery. This field is completely conscious, as is the whole of creation.
Earth is conscious, spirits are conscious, plants are conscious, rocks and stars and insects are conscious, inanimate objects even have a form of consciousness in them. From this shamanic perspective, everything is conscious.
For a shaman or indigenous medicine person–all things, all information, all memories, energies, places, beings–can potentially be accessed by those who intentionally engage and communicate with the field. This is is the foundational belief behind energy healing, shamanic paths, spiritual reading, and many religious and spiritual paths.
Though the training methods vary greatly, and the language may be different from one path to another, the underlying truth is the same. Human consciousness is altered in some way so that a different (yet connected) reality is accessed in order to shed light on our ordinary reality, or mundane level of consciousness.
A multitude of possibilities exist for activating this shift in consciousness. It may be accomplished by drumming, singing, toning; by meditation or prayer, in dreams, astral journeying, or by communicating with helping spirits or beings who assist the medicine person.
Many tools exist to facilitate this communication, including hallucinogenic plants, rituals, reading energies or divination, prayer, and meditation.
One form that helped me immensely in my own journey as a medicine person, is dowsing. Dowsing is done with rods (as in the case of locating water or minerals, etc.), or with a pendulum.
Pendulums and rods are energy amplifiers. They simply amplify the energy that is present in a person’s nervous system circuitry. With great commitment and practice, dowsing can be a highly accurate way of accessing information for healing that would not otherwise be available.
For example, I was recently asked about the differences between two similar pure lavender essential oils; the French wild lavender, and lavender fine population.
One can begin by inhaling each oil several times through a 30 minute dry down to discern the aromatic differences. Though they are both distilled from genetically diverse or “wild” lavenders, the aroma of each one is unique. In my opinion, the wild French lavender is slightly more balanced and softer, and the lavender fine is slightly more activating, spicy, and herbaceous.
Of course, both lavenders will have similar healing properties based on the chemistry of lavender essential oil. Yet each oil, in the shamanic perspective, is a living, conscious being. They will interact differently with individuals on a spirit level.
Through accessing another form of information, such as dowsing, wild French lavender essential oil may prove to be much more effective for a person who is healing a skin condition related to stress, for example.
Another person, who is also healing a skin condition related to stress, may dowse positive for the lavender fine. Both lavenders are super effective for this condition, yet one will dowse positive for one person, and the other will dowse positive for another.
I know that when I use a tool such as dowsing or intuitive sensing to select essential oils for treating conditions, I generally have about a 97% effective rate (based on how satisfied people are with the results). When I just choose an essential oil to recommend with my mind–something I almost never do anymore–that rate drops significantly.
So my short answer to the question of what are the differences between these two very similar essential oils, is this. The oils are unique individuals that work differently on energetic and spiritual levels, with the people who are using them. Rooted in the Great Mystery, there is no way to define those differences concretely, other than to smell the two oils, open to experience their gifts individually, and access information from a higher level of consciousness.
This is the way of co-creation, the way of the shaman. It is accessible to anyone who wants to commit the time and attention to practicing this art, and a great place to begin is by simply smelling the oils and allowing your body’s response indicate which oil to choose.