Another way of discovering more about our herbal heritage is to look at plant names, especially the popular folk names. Many of them have Lady or Old Man in the title. So you get Lady’s Mantle or Lady’s Smock – both apparently named after the Virgin Mary – but who or what were they named after originally? I suspect it must was a Pagan deity.
In the same way plants with ‘old man’ as a nickname were often associated in some way with the devil, which after all was a demonised version of old Pagan deities. So you get ‘Old Man’ for Southernwood, ‘Old man’s beard’ for Traveller’s Joy, ‘Old man’s pepper’ for Meadowsweet and in southern England ‘Old Man’ was for Rosemary. All these were probably very important plants that had to be demonised to discourage veneration. Find these plants – honour them, and you’re half way to reclaiming our Herbal Heritage.
With Rosemary we know something else, too, that it was said to grow best wherever ‘the old grey mare was the better horse – in order words, where the wife was the boss! Even now I think Rosemary grows best wherever the Divine feminine - the goddess - is honoured. The plant may well have originally sacred to her.
This might sound far fetched, but the best evidence we have is actually within the rosemary plant itself. It can grow huge, with branches thick enough to make a good wand (or spoon - food stirred with a rosemary spoon was supposed to be extra nourishing!)
Look at this Rosemary wand that Mr Penry made earlier in the year:
Made of Rosemary wood, can you see the familiar witchy 'goddess' outline here?
