"Calypso bulbosa var. occidentalis, Family ORCHIDACEAE, Fairyslipper, Kalypsō Orchid, Venus's slipper, Western Fairy slipper.
..Calypso comes from the greek, Kalypsō, meaning, hidden, concealed, also to deceive or enchant. Kalypsō, was a nymph in Greek mythology, who lived on the island of Ogygia, where, according to the Odyssey, she detained Odysseus for seven years.
Kalypsō kept Odysseus prisoner as her immortal husband seducing him with her singing, Odysseus loves Penelope and wants to leave the island to return to her. Blue eyed Athena asks Zeus to let him go. Eventually she relents giving him bread, wine and a raft for the journey.
Venus' Slipper rising on a single, stem with one single widely oval basal leaf on short petiole. Moist woods blooming after snowmelt in early spring in Cascadia. It's the first of Cascadia's orchids to bloom. Venus' Slipper likes bright sun, fairly flat terrain, with a circumboreal distribution it drips down on polaris flowing snow lines, like cedar and birch leaf mulch and moss. The flower is brilliant magenta in the sun when it first opens, with a tufted lip bottom and five crowned pointed petals, later the 3 center will remain erect, while the two towards the cream tufted tip while curl downward.
The Kalypsō orchid feels that way, quite dreamy and captivating, sitting with her can happen quite suddenly and you lose all sense of time and purpose. She is immensely beautiful and tragically alone in her Cascadia forest Queedom. Like the solitary single round green leaf at her base.
There is a strong connection to Venus, wooing with a strong Neptunian energy that is both relaxing and energizing. This plant provides a directional energy which is fundamentally healing like Venus as an evening star with the nearly full moon, a potent pain reliever.
Orchid Kalypsō is as Nicholas Culpeper wrote in the 1640's "orchids are to be used with some discretion...they are hot and moist in operation, under the dominion of Dame Venus and provoke lust exceedingly;", Culpeper and much of our herbalism relies on astrology. The orchids in general are quite languid. Although pain is today understood to be rooted in a bodily process, and much acute pain probably is...the pain orchids approach is more rooted in the essence of a person's experience which can co-exist with so called medical pain, orchids would deal more exclusively with romantic loss whereby one's soul mate has exited yet the need to renew the sacred marriage vow exists to resolve the internal grieving pain where love is absent yet required for resolution... that type of pain, that type of potent pain relief. So that one can lose oneself in the beloved. As Jesus said in Matthew 19:5-6 "And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? 6Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore Elohim hath joined together, let not man put asunder."
Just as Odyssey was trapped, enchanted, soul stolen by Kalypsō, woven by her golden loom, his true love was Penelope. It was not that he was unfaithful to Penelope, but that his soul was stolen in such a way that he was gone for those seven years. The healing nature of romantic passion is not lust, it is integration. So the profound pain of soul-loss can sometimes be addressed by plants, by roots, by becoming more alive, restored, reborn once again. The mystery of twice born is part of Fairyslipper, Kalypsō Orchid, Venus's slipper, Western Fairy slipper.
Orchid Kalypsō is as Nicholas Culpeper wrote in the 1640's "orchids are to be used with some discretion...they are hot and moist in operation, under the dominion of Dame Venus and provoke lust exceedingly;", Culpeper and much of our herbalism relies on astrology. The orchids in general are quite languid. Although pain is today understood to be rooted in a bodily process, and much acute pain probably is...the pain orchids approach is more rooted in the essence of a person's experience which can co-exist with so called medical pain, orchids would deal more exclusively with romantic loss whereby one's soul mate has exited yet the need to renew the sacred marriage vow exists to resolve the internal grieving pain where love is absent yet required for resolution... that type of pain, that type of potent pain relief. So that one can lose oneself in the beloved. As Jesus said in Matthew 19:5-6 "And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? 6Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore Elohim hath joined together, let not man put asunder."
Just as Odyssey was trapped, enchanted, soul stolen by Kalypsō, woven by her golden loom, his true love was Penelope. It was not that he was unfaithful to Penelope, but that his soul was stolen in such a way that he was gone for those seven years. The healing nature of romantic passion is not lust, it is integration. So the profound pain of soul-loss can sometimes be addressed by plants, by roots, by becoming more alive, restored, reborn once again. The mystery of twice born is part of Fairyslipper, Kalypsō Orchid, Venus's slipper, Western Fairy slipper.
by Paul Manski
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