A Blessing For Your Year

By Jessica: “My face to God’s light, my hands filled with love, I take that behind to strengthen you, and that ahead to lighten your load; that you may dance your path and know Joy in all things.”

Happy New Year and Chinese New Year to all my Lifereader friends, old and new!

As we step fully into the new year, I would like to share a blessing from my tradition and offer the first 10 people to respond a free, emailed mini-reading using the ancient art of anthomancy.

Anthomancy is the art of reading flowers, and something I was trained in from a very young age. In the English West Country, and the Pyrenean Basque Country where my Celtic ancestors came from, anthomancy was a common way for the healer, or wise one of the region, to read a couple’s future, how the year’s crops would fare, and often much more.

When I was a young child in England, gypsies still came to the door in the spring. Not once did they allow our family pay for their palmistry. They would read for all the adult women in our home, and then always give the grandfather (“Pop” as he was known) a sprig of heather. In unspoken return, Pop would bless them for the year, instructing me to read the heather sprig for their year ahead. The sprig would be put on the mantelpiece until Christmas, when it would be burned in the fireplace, leaving a space between the old and the new.

The blessing for your year ahead, I pass on to each of you reading this.

For a mini-reading using anthomancy, please take time to sit quietly for 5 minutes, and then choose 3 of the following pictures, or send me 3 pictures of flowers that you have taken yourself.