Granoscopes™ / Winter 2021 - Summer 2022
These Granoscopes are another rendition of the Herbascopes and Florascopes. For this, read the Granoscopes for your rising, sun, moon, Venus, and north node signs. They can be read through both tropical and sidereal placements as well as any stellium signs in your natal chart. Take your time digesting this timeless grain medicine which references history, lore & magick, and consistent facts to aid us in building sensible bridges into the future.
Aries | RYE || There is something promising and potent in being able to take a story and break whatever spell-bind we may find in it which limits our perspective of a situation or moment in history. Rye is a grass grown as grain which is riddled in legends, true and false, regarding its impact during the witch trials. Ergot, a fungus which grows on Rye, has been said to cause hallucinations and other effects like that of LSD, so there has often been a conflation of Rye being considered partly responsible for the symptoms that some people had blamed witches for. Long story short: that has been debunked and proven to be an untrue tale. Thus, the lesson for you, by way of Rye, is to allow yourself to unlearn old stories and, in turn, undo the hold they have had on your psyche -- you may find yourself liberated in ways you didn’t realize you needed.
Taurus | BUCKWHEAT || Out of the two common types of modern Buckwheat, Tartary buckwheat is a self-fertile plant meaning that it can reproduce or “in-breed” using its own pollen. Knowing this, you may not be surprised to find that this grain/fruit seed has long been used in magick for abundance. Similar to your own frequency, Taurus, Buckwheat has a strong correspondence to the Venusian energy signature and is considered ideal in workings to protect the home and expand upon the resources available to you. To tune more deeply into this aspect of yourself, you may find delight in meditatively grinding some Buckwheat seeds and sprinkling the resulting flour/powder around the home as you move through it and speak aloud your incantations for prosperity and security. Build a bridge for your body and mind to connect through the intentional earthy element of this ritual; it is especially effective when done during the solstices and/or equinoxes.
Gemini | SPELT || I really love this for you -- Spelt is speaking to you of the longevity that results from having spent some time in a certain obscurity. I recently read a short blog entry titled “Why Ancient Wheats Got Left Behind” where they relate that ‘ancient grains’ (“grains that have remained unchanged over the last several hundred years”) such as Spelt, have tightly adhering hulls (sort of like shells) which don’t come off as easily as naked grains or those with looser hulls. As wheat became a staple food in the world, farmers sought to cultivate varieties of wheat whose hull comes off easily. This is very telling for you, as the advice is that you see the hidden blessing in perhaps being underestimated or overlooked by whoever, self included. You will come to know yourself with more integrity and whatever you are cultivating will be reflected in and as longevity. Consider “legacy” and what it means to you.
Cancer | FONIO || Meditation practices and perhaps even consistent yoga movement will be especially useful for your mental and emotional health in the coming seasons. Becoming more acutely aware of the dance between the body and mind will enable you to bring greater stability and sensibility into your experience. Fonio is a grain of wisdom in the sense that it empowers the nervous system including the brain through providing the appropriate nutritional nourishment -- B vitamins, zinc, iron, magnesium to name a few. Some of the mentioned essentials are also helpful for cardiovascular health, speaking directly to the way that your mental balance will equal emotional stability and vice versa. Spend some time contemplating and feeling into what comes up when you ask yourself what is valuable to you and what that means for what you should be giving energy and attention to. Refine your forces.
Leo | BARLEY || Before there were Barley processing factories, people such as farmers and their families would take Barley seeds and crush them between two flat stones -- this process came to be known as “grinding” and is also the origin of the phrase “the daily grind”. Something that a lot of the grains in these messages have in common is that they are beckoning us to a certain depth of attention within our individual lives. The individual becomes the collective as people are in relationship with each other, and our relationship with ourselves and the elements in our lives come into play in our communal experiences. This considered, your approach in this time should be one of steadying into your power through becoming more mindful of the implications within what you say and do. Furthermore, this will enhance the quality of your impact in the world around you.
Virgo | CORN || In Michele E. Lee’s Working the Roots, there is a note regarding corn silk. It reads, “today, most corn is grown from GMO seeds that are specifically engineered so that the seeds themselves act as an insecticide to control pests. The result is a crop that may produce a different medicinal agency and corn than when the plant was popularly used in African American healing traditions..” Juxtaposing this with the fact that corn was first hybridized about 9,000 years ago, it is interesting to note that Corn has retained a certain stability by its consistent identity as a sort of shapeshifter. This is a particular ability that when applied benevolently can benefit more than the self. It enables you to be adaptable in situations while promising that you will maintain an essence that is your point of homeostasis. In community, this is about being able to adapt for self-preservation all the while applying that same capacity for moving out of behavior patterns and ways of relating that are not helping you and your connections expand and evolve.
Libra | OATS || This is an optimal time for you to feed your emotions. Perhaps a strange concept to you, especially if you tend to be of the Libras whose nature is more intellectual and logical, but one which will help you become more centered in how you internalize and interact with your environment and what may feel out of your control. In countries such as Scotland, Oats are used as soup thickeners, bringing a kind of coating, sweetness, and thus deeper nourishment into the meal. In a sense, you are being asked to simultaneously peel back the layers of your emotions while considering the value those layers may have for informing and filling you by way of awareness. Oat medicine offers you a way to be more in tune with your emotional body all the while becoming cognizant of how it impacts the way your physical body functions or dysfunctions.
Scorpio | SORGHUM || You are being tasked with the opportunity to sit and move with paradoxes and elements that seem to contradict. This affords you education and insight into the processes of alchemy where you can take the same ingredients and make a variety of things. Sorghum expresses this versatility as a grain useful for making everything from syrup to liquor to porridge and even biofuel. Naturally, you can apply this lesson as one which enhances your perception and allows you to readily witness abundance as a direct result of your creative action. Learn how to take one thing and turn it upside down and all around to encounter it in new ways, thus providing solutions to situations you may otherwise have a hard time moving through.
Sagittarius | WHEAT || Play a bit more -- that is what came to mind when I saw Wheat show up for you. Your signature is considered playful in some ways, but I do get a sense that lately the happenings of life may have made things feel a bit more serious for you. Wheat is one of those grains that tends to be approached with caution especially during these times. There has been an adulteration in the processes of both cultivation and preparation of wheat and wheat-based products such as our daily bread. Many now feel themselves intolerant to what they consider is the gluten in Wheat, but upon closer inspection, we find that what we are intolerant of is the ways modern wheat differs from the ancient grains our ancestors were eating. Moreover, Wheat invites you to approach seemingly threatening situations with a bit more wonder and curiosity -- you may find them to not be dangerous at all.
Capricorn | RICE || Magical traditions remain alive through the experiences that many of us share daily. Take for instance the act of throwing Rice after wedded couples to increase their fertility. It could be that many people have not given much thought to the significance of that ritualistic act, but it is evident that we all seem to believe that this may offer these lovers some sort of ‘luck’. Rice invites you to see the magick in the seemingly mundane and the things that are part of your everyday lives so much so that we may have lost sight of how those things inform what we are creating. Rice has been regarded as a sign of abundance by many people, from the Ojibwe to the Brahmins. Rice’s invitation for you is to believe, again, in magick and see how it is present with you all along the way.
Aquarius | QUINOA || Nowadays a lot of us enjoy Quinoa in the states and throughout other parts of the world. Peru, one of the lands to where Quinoa is native and is exported from in great quantity, does not often experience the benefit of this grain touted as ‘superfood’ -- the demand for it is so great that Quinoa farmers now primarily sell it instead of eating it. Sometimes we are moving so fast and acting primarily with our own concerns in mind that we do not stop to think about how our actions impact not just our local communities but also the global. Quinoa, sharing itself and this message with us, invites us into more considerable consciousness in terms of what we are consuming. Aquarius tends to be community-minded, generally, but as an air sign can also move too fast at times and lose sight of their impact on the world. Today and going forward, Quinoa asks you to be more mindful; learn to dance with what you can and cannot affect, acting accordingly.
Pisces | TEFF || Because the seed of Teff is so small, people have considered that its name is derived from the Amharic word for lost which is “teffa”. Whether true or not, this speaks directly to the message that Teff holds for you -- don’t lose sight of the little things. Teff calls you to play with the inner child, to give life to the spark within you that may have been dimmed for one reason or another, to keep hope alive, to not allow a good thing to just slip through your fingers. You are remembering yourself before some of the traumas and dramas which afflicted and shifted how you related to life, people, and the world around you. You are returning to a certain innocence and finding comfort in this. Teff calls you to retrieve what may have been lost and breathe into it and it into yourself, again.