For the magical and the mundane, chamomile is there. We can drink it, wash with it and bathe in it…and we have done so for thousands of years...
Listen now, transcript below:
Come, sit down, rest with me a while, and together we’ll brew a ritual of serenity, courage, allyship, and dreams with one plantkin who has been called a death doula, a guiding light, and the plant physician, a magical member of our daisy family who finds their way into spells for everything from love, to luck, protection, wealth and more. Found everywhere from ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs to contemporary suburban 7-11s, in beer and in cosmetics.
Come, sit, slow down, rest with me a while, we’ll drink chamomile tea and get steeped in our kinship, myth and medicine. Close your eyes and picture a small, soft watercolour painting of a rabbit in a little blue coat. “Peter was not very well during the evening.” Beatrix Potter wrote, “His mother put him to bed, and made some chamomile tea.”
Curl up with me and a cup of chamomile tea and let these flowers form a blanket. Take a sip….Mmmmm Chamomile. Earthy and floral… The lovechild of planet Sun and element Water. A little flower of the daisy family whose power is so universally understood that the pharmacopoeia of 26 countries list chamomile as a drug. A white and yellow weed who has soothed the masses and anointed the body of a Pharaoh.
Take another sip and I’ll read you a poem by Katherine Mansfield - probably best known for her story Garden Party that shines a light on classism and poverty. This poem is called
Camomile Tea
Outside the sky is light with stars;
There's a hollow roaring from the sea.
And, alas! for the little almond flowers,
The wind is shaking the almond tree.
How little I thought, a year ago,
In the horrible cottage upon the Lee
That he and I should be sitting so
And sipping a cup of camomile tea.
Light as feathers the witches fly,
The horn of the moon is plain to see;
By a firefly under a jonquil flower
A goblin toasts a bumble-bee.
We might be fifty, we might be five,
So snug, so compact, so wise are we!
Under the kitchen-table leg
My knee is pressing against his knee.
Our shutters are shut, the fire is low,
The tap is dripping peacefully;
The saucepan shadows on the wall
Are black and round and plain to see.
For Katherine, chamomile tea is emblematic of a loving comfort, accessible to rich and poor alike - so snug, so compact with its tight little buds, so wise… and the witches fly.
Chamomile offers a wide range of health benefits, both traditionally and in modern research. It’s widely used to reduce anxiety and promote sleep, thanks to compounds like apigenin, which binds to brain receptors and induces calmness (Srivastava et al., 2010). Chamomile tea aids digestion, easing bloating and indigestion, and has anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties that support immune function and skin health (McKay & Blumberg, 2006). It may also help manage menstrual pain, mild insomnia, and wound healing due to its antimicrobial effects.
For the magical and the mundane, chamomile is there. We can drink it, wash with it and bathe in it…and we have done so for thousands of years.
Ancient Egyptians carved and painted Chamomile’s likeness in places of healing, offering, burial and ritual. The Ebers Papyrus (c. 1550 BCE) lists chamomile as a key medicinal herb.
See Chamomile heals with a soft rebellion, a reminder that rest is resistance, so it’s no surprise that chamomile is getting the spotlight in these times when we’re all in a state of collective fear and grief. And in fact, I found a New York Times article that asks Why Is Chamomile Suddenly Everywhere? noting that our chamomile kin is suddenly showing up as an ingredient in trendy kitchens and bakeries across the USA. The New York Times might be wondering why, but us Witches know - we as a society are being drawn to the potent magic and medicine of chamomile to help us contend with the aftershocks of global pandemic, ongoing violence and bad government. Why is chamomile suddenly everywhere? Because we need it - desperately.
Herbalist Leslie Lekos said of chamomile, “I feel like the medicine that our larger culture needs is this gentle medicine. We have so many driving forces, everybody's so amped up and moving so fast, something to slow us down and get in our bodies and just feel our way through, feel embodied.” (Herbs With Rosalee podcast - season 6, ep 2).
If you know me personally, or if you’ve been listening to Missing Witches for a long time, you know that my cross to bear is anxiety - a sickly and unfocused fear that moves from stomach to heart to brain and back down into my intestines. I once asked my doctor, only half-jokingly, if there's any such thing as a non-drowsy tranquilizer. She laughed at the paradox. But for me, I have found that paradoxical kin that both soothes and relaxes AND energizes me. A beautiful cup of little dried daisies, chamomile kin that has become not just a plant ally, but a nurse and a friend.
My anxiety and ADHD often manifests in paralysis and executive dysfunction. It makes things hard sometimes. So I’ve developed a ritual - especially in the pressure writing of my chapters for our books Missing Witches and New Moon Magic. With a tiny chunk of raw citrine clutched in one sweaty palm, and a white-knuckle grip on the handle of a mug of chamomile tea in the other, I could manage to sit down at my desk, turn on my computer, and contend with the liminal space of a blank page.
The steam of the tea whispers its way up my nostrils and into my head: it’s ok, take a breath, you can do this, you’re good enough, relax, and let’s get started.
I honestly don’t know if I’d be an author without the kindness of chamomile encouraging me to persevere, but I admit, I wasn’t as good a friend to chamomile as it was to me. I guess you could say we were drinking buddies, we’d get together and I’d down a few mugs, but I never took the time to get to know chamomile. Until now. And much like with the humans in my life, the act of asking questions revealed a whole world of thrilling, uplifting, comforting, nurturing, encouraging, amazing, soul-satisfying and powerful truths that drew me closer to a loving relationship with my little flower friend. I am becoming chamomile kin.
In ancient Rome, Chamomile essential oil was used to boost soldiers’ courage before heading for war because of its strong solar associations, and symbolic link to vitality and resilience. While chamomile is most commonly known today for calming effects, the Romans understood that true courage isn't simple aggression - true courage is a calm clarity in the face of fear. And though I didn’t know this until I started my research for this episode, that is how I had been using chamomile for years, to boost my courage for the fight against my own paralysis - a true courage, conjuring calm in the face of fear.
And probably the Romans knew what we know now, as in Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1, Falstaff proclaims “…the camomile grows faster the more it is trodden on“.
Chamomile’s strange little superpower - growing better when it's trodden on - is part botanical magic, part evolutionary resilience, and something that we chamomile kin can be inspired to conjure in our own lives. Chamomile is naturally low to the ground, with flexible stems. When stepped on, they don’t snap or break easily and instead of dying back, they spread wider, sending out new runners and shoots. Mild mechanical stress like being walked on can actually stimulate chamomile’s growth. As a biological response to damage, chamomile perceives pressure as a sign to reinforce and expand.
As Michigan herbalist Jim McDonald says, “Gentle is powerful - gentle does not mean weak.”
Witches, chamomile kin, do I even need to unpack this botanical metaphor? Pressure is a sign to reinforce - reinforce our relationships to nature and to each other, reinforce our communities, not to die back, but to spread wider.
Chamomile courage doesn’t mean constant victory. It means continuing to grow, continuing to stand, even when it feels like the world is walking all over you.
And I can’t help but be reminded of one of my favourite scenes from one of my favourite movies, Harold And Maude, where Maude points out that what appears to be a field of uniform daisies is made up of thousands of individuals with all kinds of observable differences. CLIP
Ariel Kusby of Seagrape Apothecary wrote “Chamomile is an herb of the sun. It’s gentle warmth is akin to the sunlight at dawn, or a gentle flame, rather than a raging fire. Magically speaking, chamomile is a guiding light. It has been a popular ingredient in folk magic and spells for centuries, because it nurtures and protects, while also amplifying magical energy and psychic abilities. Paradoxically, because of its association with the sun, it increases vital energy, but because it is also associated with the element of water, it can aid in dreamwork and other intuitive practices.”
Chamomile is used in so many different kinds of spellwork because it is a tiny sun, a little gold coin, a bringer of courage and of calm. I picked up my copy of Judika Illes’s Big Book of Practical Spells, flipped to to the index to look for entries on chamomile magic, and found that the book contains eighteen references to chamomile from curse removal to money oil, dream pillows to good luck charms, but my favourite piece comes from a section called The Magic Garden (pg 105). Judika writes: Chamomile is the plant doctor. Place it near plants that are ailing. If you see chamomile start to creep, watch where it goes. It may be paying a house call.”
I was stunned. Chamomile isn’t just a friend and nurse to us humans, but also to the whole living world. Turns out chamomile is called a “plant doctor” or “plant physician” because it improves the health and vitality of other plants growing nearby. This nickname comes from both observed effects in companion planting and its chemical properties that positively influence the surrounding soil and plant ecosystem. Chamomile produces natural antifungal and antibacterial compounds which it releases into the surrounding soil. These compounds help suppress root rot, help reduce harmful microbial populations in the rhizosphere (the root zone) and help create a more resilient soil environment.
A recent study confirms how chamomile aids us all:
“Chamomile has a strong antimicrobial and antioxidant ability [212]. Various researchers have demonstrated the high antimicrobial ability of the extract and essential oil (EO) of this plant against various bacteria (Gram-positive and Gram-negative) including E. coli, Salmonella thyphimurium, S. aureus, and Bacillus. The high antimicrobial ability of this plant is also due to the high contents of phenolic compounds. Chamomile contains flavonoids, terpenoids, phenolic compounds, apigenin, and matricin [58,205,213,214,215]. The presence of flavonoids in the extract of this plant is the reason for its antioxidant characteristic. Chamomile shows various pharmacological activities including antioxidative, antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, antifungal, analgesic, anticancer, anti-hypoglycemic, anti-stress, antihypertensive, and hepatoprotective properties [57,58,216,217].”
It helps. Chamomile helps.
A couple years ago, I sat down with Mara June of Motherwort and Rose to talk about plant magic for grief support, and Mara took the opportunity to basically gush about chamomile. HERE’S THAT CLIP:
Plants have been death doulas for humans for a long time. Yeah, so like one of the plants I've been thinking about a lot right now is chamomile and I’ve just got to make a pitch for chamomile right now because they're just such an incredible plant that I think is really kind of taken for granted.
And it's Accessibility or like, you know, so many people have heard of chamomile like, all right, tell me about a plant I don't know. No, like chamomile is amazing and super underappreciated. And I think has so much to offer moments like this or whenever we feel dropped into the collective ongoing.
Trauma and grief, and it's not just the the herbal actions of chamomile that it, like, physiologically is, um, relaxing to our nervous systems, helps us digest our food, is, like, soothing and relaxing to our muscles, can help us release tension, can, can help us, um, is also a great ally for our lungs, for those with asthma or who feel like their breath, um, Is, you know, I mean, breath is really one of our lungs are another seat of grief and in traditional Chinese medicine like that's understood, but just like the ways that our nervous systems are connected to our breath and like the quality of our breath being feeling breathless or feeling yeah, just like this, that tension in our chest.
Chamomile is helpful for that as well, but like aside from all of all of those amazing things that chamomile is doing. I think just like the magic of chamomile. Um, yeah, I also forgot to mention is, um, really this incredible nourisher of art. And like helps us get a deeper rest. Um, and also it's been used to like prevent, um, insomnia or help with insomnia and nightmares.
Just like this really powerful ally for our dream space and our rest space. Chamomile also just has all of these like incredible, um, magical. Like history and folklore and practices and like, has been used as a grave plant to help ease the passage of the dead, um, has been strewn on birthing beds to help ease the passage of those being born.
And I think just really asks us to examine our relationships with rest and rupture with birthing new worlds with bringing nourishment into times of crisis and, um. I just, yeah, I just feel like in these times when we, when so much can feel overwhelming, Cam Emile is really this ally for helping us to co regulate, to remember to breathe, to like ground ourselves in our movements in this deep well of compassion and to cultivate this like ongoing attunement to ourselves in the world where those things aren't pitted against each other. Like, I think chamomile helps us not soften the edgy edginess or like the edges, but like meet the edges, like come with gifts, you know, and, and that is really beautiful.
And also just, again, reminds us that like attunement is always. Relational like that, we can only, you know, we that this whole, like, idea of self care and collective care. I think they often get pitted against each other. And I, my experience with camera meals, it really helps us to remember both ourselves and others.
And that those. Things can't actually be separated. Um, and that we have to nourish both ourselves and others, not nourish ourselves at the expense of others or show up, offering gifts when we ourselves are not been able to create that space for ourselves that they have to be, we have to figure out how to do it together.
And so chamomile, I feel like just as carrying this, um, into the world right now for me in big ways. And I'm just want to share and encourage folks. If you can. Can get a hold of some chamomile tea or even just like sit with some of the messages of this plant that I think they they have a lot of a lot to offer this moment.
Despite its soft, soothing nature, Chamomile isn’t passive, or yielding, it’s active and it’s fucking powerful. It’s liminal, thrives in the wild edges, in cracks of forgotten places, seeped into pharaoh bones, and blooms defiantly again and again in that language of slow revolution, mutual aid, community, and rest-as-resistance. It teaches us to soften without surrender, to hold the sacred in our teacups and in our grief. To inhale magic and hold it in our lungs to help us sing.
Chamomile is an icon of care, reaching out to tend to other plants in need. And humans too. So if you’re feeling like a little trodden daisy, growing in the cracks, know that you are chamomile kin, that gentle does not mean weak, that true courage is staying calm in the face of fear and spreading out in response to pressure. For witches who refuse to be trampled or tamed, who dream while awake, who heal on their own terms at their own pace, and find themselves healing others in the process, let’s take chamomile as kin, as friend, as ally and as role model.
This year, after spring’s last frost, I will seed and hopefully grow my own patch of Chamomile. We’ll spill the tea, and get to know each other better. We’ll be gentle with each other, and a little less anxious. Gentle is powerful, gentle does not mean weak.
Witches, tell the world: do not mistake kindness for weakness. To each other, let us all be chamomile kin - little flowers reaching out dreamily to those in need with our tendrils of comforting care, create a more resilient environmet. Snug, wound-healing and wise. We can be chamomile-infused - gentle, powerful, ally, nurse and friend.
I’ll leave you for today with a bit more little flower softness from May: I like chamomile tea, and it mostly tastes like honey, that's why I like chamomile...it's white petals with a yellow centre.
