Show Notes:

Join us for a wide ranging discussion with Isha Lerner, astrologer and flower essence consultant, as we explore the intersection of flower essences and astrology. Isha shares her formative experiences at Findhorn in Scotland, and how her studies of flower essences, astrology and tarot came together in her work guiding people into awareness of their lives as mythic journeys. She shares her insights of the natal chart as a type of signature, how it can inform the native in their process of transforming difficult aspects into gifts, and how to work through karmic imprints to discover the beauty of the original Self. Generational patterns from outer planet placements also come into the picture as part of the process of collective evolution. In this moment of upheaval, flower essences can support us to manage our anxiety, feelings of isolation, and to help us restructure our lives in new and healthier patterns.

Audio:

FEP40 Astrological Influences with Isha Lerner

FEP40 Astrological Influences with Isha Lerner

Video:

Flower Essences discussed during the show:

• Larch – Healing Herbs
• Saguaro Cactus – Power of Flowers, FES
• Sunflower – Power of Flowers, FES
• Dandelion – Power of Flowers, FES
• Aloe Vera – FES
• Lavender – Power of Flowers, FES
• White Chestnut – Healing Herbs
• White Magnolia – Power of Flowers
• Mimulus – Healing Herbs, Power of Flowers
• Aspen – Healing Herbs
• Sweet Pea – Power of Flowers, FES
• Zinna – Power of Flowers, FES
• Buttercup – Power of Flowers, FES
• Iris – Power of Flowers, FES

Our Guest

Isha Lerner, the Power of Flowers Healing Essences and ishalerner.com

Her podcast All Things Enchanted

Her publications: Inner Child Cards, Power Flower Cards, Tarot of the Four Elements, Triple Goddess Tarot

Show Transcript

Rochana Felde: [00:00:38] Welcome back to The Flower Essence Podcast. Today, we are excited to talk about the intersection of flower essences and astrology with our special guest, Isha Lerner. Isha is an international astrologer, a tarot scholar, consultant, teacher, and bestselling author who has been working with and researching flower essences for about 35 years. She has published the Power of Flowers Deck, the Tarot of the Four Elements, The Triple Goddess Tarot, and the Inner Child Fairy-Tale Tarot cards.

Isha’s work bridges across countries and cultures and was honored to be part of the magical early days of the Findhorn Community in northern Scotland from 1976 to 1980, where her deep work with the co-creation of humanity and nature was inspired. Her understanding and experiences with out-of-body and paranormal states of consciousness lives at the root of her transformational work as a teacher and a healer. Her many years of work in this field has inspired her to research the meaning of incarnation and evolution through past life research, her astrological karmic imprint work, and the study of mystical meaning of fairy tales, myth, and archetypes.

Wow. It’s quite a realm of things that you are immersed in that we all love, and we are so excited to have you on the podcast, Isha. Welcome.

Kathleen Aspenns: [00:02:16] Welcome, we’re really glad to have you here.

Isha Lerner: [00:02:18] Thank you so much.

Kathleen Aspenns: [00:02:19] Yeah, we’re excited about this conversation. We’ve been really wishing and hoping to have someone to come to talk with us about this intersection of astrology and flower essences. Rochana and I are both interested in astrology, not professional astrologers, but very interested. And it does inform our practices and we wanted to have somebody on who could really talk more in depth about how these two fields intersect. So we’re really glad to have you.

Isha Lerner: [00:02:48] Thank you. I’m really happy to be here.

Rochana Felde: [00:02:51] How did you get involved in both of these fields and how did you start integrating and merging them together?

Isha Lerner: [00:03:00] I think the first piece that is most important for me personally was finding that there was something more in the world than just the material world that I could touch and see. So I think many of us, probably a lot of your listeners, have always felt there’s something more to the world and that we want more out of the world in terms of an understanding of those of us that have had out-of-body experiences, those of us who feel that there is greater meaning in the world and want to create a story of our life that carries that mystery and that meaning. So I felt that way in my early teens and like most early teens, I was involved in high school and cheerleading and everything else that I did. But I always felt different. I always felt like I don’t fit in. And that feeling of not fitting in pushed me toward an exploration of would it be back in that day more like poetry and music. And I found Robert Monroe’s work and found a tarot deck when I was 18 years old– actually, was given a tarot deck. And I just went through like a fish to water. Just felt like, Oh my God, I know this. It’s almost like from a past life I knew it from somewhere else. And so that kind of began this feeling that there’s more out there.

I found Krishnamurti, I found Joseph Campbell, I found Carl Jung’s work, Rudolf Steiner’s work. And this is what connected to all these pieces that were connected to myth and magic and archetype and psychology and then later into the field of astrology and tarot. For me, by the time I was about 20, I was immersed in that world. Moved to the Hawaiian Islands. My soul opened like a blossoming flower. And I just– from there on out my entire life has been immersed in these studies. So you know how some people have a career or some people have work? I think probably you would agree, and those of us who are in this field, it’s our life. It isn’t really a career, although it is, but it’s our life and it’s what we do. And those of us blessed enough to turn it to a career that has fulfilled us with our purpose and destiny, I would say that that has been one of the greatest honors I feel is that I can turn all of this work and interesting study and curiosity and, of course, hard work into a lifelong work that’s both connected to who I am and the work that I do in the world.

Rochana Felde: [00:05:51] Wonderful. And I just have to ask, how was Findhorn– and for those who don’t or haven’t heard of that, it’s an island in Scotland. And it was an early place– and I don’t really know a lot about it, but I just– every time I hear about it, my soul kind of goes, Oh my God, I wish I could have experienced that, or I still want to go and check it out. It just sounds amazing. Maybe you could just tell us a little bit about that.

Isha Lerner: [00:06:17] Absolutely. Well, those of us again who are involved in this world of creating story and following in the sense, as Joseph Campbell would say, our bliss, that isn’t necessarily that easy to do. I mean, there’s a lot of focus and hard work connected to staying on path and staying on purpose. And when I lived in Hawaii, I went on a backpacking trip and went through all the islands, and I ran into a woman who had the book, The Magic Of Findhorn, and this was in the early ’70s, and she just had finished reading and said, “Hey, this is a cool book. Do you want to read it?” So I was like, “Yeah, sure.” So I consumed the book in a day, and when I returned back to my home on Oahu, where I rented a room in Manoa Valley back in the day was beautiful jungle area. The person who had sublet-ted my room had just returned from Findhorn, and he was one of the major people that had started the Findhorn kitchens, and he was a prominent member of the Findhorn community. And it was magical to meet up with him and a surprise I had just learned about Findhorn, and that’s how everything for many of us works, right? The law of synchronicity and those magical moments that change our life forever. And so we had met. We clicked. And two days later, he received a letter from Peter Caddy, who’s the founder– one of the founders of the Findhorn community, along with Eileen Caddy and Dorothy Maclean. And he said,
“Can you come back to the community? We’ve just purchased the Cluny Hill hotel, which is like a castle in the forest, and we’re going to turn it from a five-star hotel into the Community Learning Center. But there was a transition that needed to take place, and he said, “Do you know any cooks to come with you?” Well, I had been working at a vegetarian restaurant called Laulima at Oahu. And Christopher looked at me and said, “Do you want to go to Findhorn?” And I said, “I do.” And Peter Caddy sent us tickets. And before I knew it, and again, the wink of an eye, I was sailing over the skies to Scotland to Findhorn.

And really, many people who have found their way to Findhorn back in those days, the stories are very similar. It was just kind of like we were invited in a way and it was really beautiful back in those days to be in a way creating a university school that is still in process today. But of course, with the pandemic and everything else that’s changing in the world, it has had a strong impact on the community and how it can actually offer visitors and classes and whatnot. So there’s a lot of transition going on and it has been going on for a long time at Findhorn.

But the keynote of Findhorn, for those of you who don’t know, is the beautiful co-creation between humanity and nature. And Peter Caddy and Eileen Caddy and particularly, Dorothy Maclean had this beautiful connection to the Devic world and the communication with plants, and they were featured in a lot of different books at the time. In the ’70s, a lot of renaissance kind of thought was taking place. And one of those beautiful connections to nature and connections to a universal thought program was that we are not separate from the plant world, from the animal kingdom, that we can, in a sense, connect to the higher meaning and messaging of the plants, the trees, the flowers around us. With that, there was tremendous gardening, there was community spirit, there was hard work and group consciousness that was taking place, and a lot of personality work as well because once as we know, we enter into community, there’s a lot of our own ego bashing that takes place and who are we within this greater context and whatnot?

So, yeah, Findhorn was an incredible opportunity. I feel so blessed. I was there from 1976 through ’81. I got married at Findhorn and I had my first daughter in Scotland, and it was just an incredible piece of a very pertinent experience that sort of held a foundation of a certain level of community spirit and lessons that were there to teach us, young troubadours, as we were to go out in the world and do our work.

In service of this project to connect people with plant wisdom and healing, we invite you to join us in building our Patreon community.

Rochana Felde: [00:54:03] There are some costs that come with creating a podcast, and we thought it would be really great for people that want to help us to be able to do it in this way. Patreon is such a great platform that helps creative people finance their projects and allows us to give you some perks for doing it. We’re offering early access to episodes, full transcripts, a flower essence Quick Start Guide, and more good stuff in the future. We’re excited to build this flower essence community with you as a critical part of it, and we thank you so much for helping to support us and our mission to spread the wisdom of nature around the world.

Kathleen Aspenns: [00:54:48] This podcast is meant for educational and entertainment purposes only. We are not physicians and do not diagnose, prescribe, or treat medical conditions. Please consult with your own physician or health care practitioner regarding the suggestions and recommendations made by the hosts and guests of The Flower Essence Podcast.