July 15, 2025 • 38 mins
In today’s episode, I’m inviting you to meet the calendula—a bright, sunny plant ally known for its gentle yet powerful healing, warmth, and protective energy. We’ll explore how calendula can help us embrace optimism, celebrate our creative expression, and tend to ourselves and our communities with love and care.
What we explore in this episode:
What calendula is and its herbal, magical, and energetic qualities
Which tarot cards and archetypes resonate with calendula’s spirit
Practical ways to work with calendula in self-care, ritual, and everyday life
💐 Meet the Plant Ally: Calendula
Calendula (Calendula officinalis), also known as pot marigold, is a hardy, vibrant flower with cheerful orange and yellow blooms. Often one of the first flowers to bloom in spring, calendula is beloved in gardens for its resilience, self-seeding abundance, and sunny energy.
Calendula is a classic skin healer—gentle, soothing, and protective. It supports wound healing, reduces inflammation, and helps clear congested lymph and digestive systems. Energetically, calendula embodies warmth, joy, and supportive care, often described as the “mom friend” of the plant world: always checking in, reminding us to drink water, and making sure we’re okay.
Calendula encourages us to step into our brightness unapologetically and to share our gifts generously.
🔮 Calendula & TarotCalendula aligns with tarot archetypes of celebration, gentle transformation, and balance.
Temperance — for its embodiment of balance, gentle healing, and wise self-regulation.
Judgment — supporting us in awakening to our true selves and embracing clarity and consciousness.
Four of Wands — representing community, celebration, joy, and finding belonging.
Calendula teaches us to honor the slow, steady processes of healing and to celebrate ourselves and our communities in small and big ways.
🌿 Plant Magic & Energetics
Edible & Herbal Uses:
Infused oils or salves for skin soothing and wound healing
Gentle hydrosols or face oils (like in daily cleansing routines)
Bath blends, bath bombs, or bath salts for softening and comforting rituals
Ritual Use:
Use dried calendula petals in garlands, altars, or protection talismans. Incorporate in home protection bundles (paired with other herbs and crystals)
Celebrate seasonal transitions and solar festivals, like Beltane or midsummer, with calendula offerings
Gardening & Offerings:
Share calendula seeds as a gift of abundance and warmth
Plant near doorways or garden edges to create a joyful, protective energetic barrier
Leave petals as offerings to spirits, ancestors, or deities for gratitude and blessings
Energetic Properties:
Encourages us to step fully into our joy
Holds a protective energy that feels more like a comforting embrace
Remind us of light returning after darkness, helping us rekindle hope and optimism when we feel stuck or dimmed
💭 Today's Tarot Pull:
From Anima Mundi Tarot Deck by Megan Wyreweden, I pulled the Two of Wands (reversed).
The reversed Two of Wands invites us to reflect on where we might be hesitating to step forward, feeling disorganized, or holding ourselves back from growth and adventure. Calendula gently reminds us to plan with intention, to prepare our next steps mindfully, and to trust that it’s okay to move at a stea
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Welcome to the Everyday Tarot Podcast, your daily dive into
the vine wisdom of the tarot. I'm your host Camille, a
Saunders healer, tarot enthusiast, and your local witch
next door. And today I'm talking about
tarot and calendula. Whether you're seasoned tarot
reader and or just starting to explore, this podcast offers
daily insights, intuitive messages, and practical advice
(00:21):
drawn from the cards. Each episode is designed to help
you connect with your inner wisdom, find clarity in your
decisions, and tap into the energy of the universe.
TuneIn every time, Monday through Friday for fresh
perspectives and empowering guidance from the Tarot as
interpreted by me. If you weren't able to attend my
recent virtual tarot card creation event or do not
(00:41):
register in time, you can get the full hour long recording
with my step by step method, examples of the tarot cards I've
created, journaling questions, and PDF to walk you through it
for just $33. The link is in the show notes to
purchase that now. Another thing I have coming up,
I will be offering a 12 week Tarot for Transformation live
(01:03):
course this summer. I'll be starting at the end of
August, so if you're interested I'll have a link in the show
notes to sign up For more information.
We will be doing calls once a week for 12 weeks and going
through Drea Blooms Tarot for transformation volume.
It's quite large where, yeah, you work through all of the
(01:25):
Major Arcana cards. So we'll just be working
through, you know, about half ofthem doing 12.
But we'll be doing calls every week, I'll be leading it, and
we'll be sort of working throughthis book together, talking
about the cards, what it means for transformation of ourselves,
embodying it, journaling exercises, sharing what we're
learning about and working on each week.
(01:47):
If you can't make the calls live, there will be recording
sent to everyone that signs up. So yeah, you can be on the
lookout for that or like I said,sign up in the show notes to get
more information and get on the interest list.
If you love the show, the best way to support it for free is by
listening daily, leaving a review, and subscribing or
(02:07):
following in your favorite podcast app.
I had a great time out at TacomaPride this past weekend where I
got to see some podcast listeners live and in person,
which was fun. I heard from some folks that
they know other people that listen to the podcast or they've
been referred to a podcast, which I love to hear people that
(02:29):
I don't even know, which was so cool.
I got to introduce people to my podcast, talk about my local,
you know, meet up group offerings.
So yeah, if you're local to the greater Puget Sound area, you
can check out the Let's Talk Tarot meet Up group for the
latest event postings. But our next one coming up, I
believe will be on July 27th from 1:00 to 3:00 PM.
(02:53):
We'll be doing just a social tarot hangout at the old hangout
in the McMenamins in Tacoma. So it's a fun tiki bar lounge
area. And yeah, so bring your tarot
cards, bring your questions, bring your tarot obsession, and
come talk to us all about tarot for a couple hours at the end of
(03:16):
this month. If you are not local to me, you
can join the Patreon if you're interested in engaging a bit
differently. So I'm hosting New Moon
Collective terror readings for free every month now, and you
can always watch those. Those will be on YouTube,
Facebook, and Instagram live on the New Moon day.
(03:40):
If you join the lovers level of the podcast on the Patreon, you
get access to an exclusive Discord to chat with me during
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playing a card for each one of my patrons in addition to after
I do the Newman Collective spread.
So if you want an individual card pulled for you once a month
(04:00):
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in addition to all the other benefits if you join the witch
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And if you're interested in my free PDF with the 2025 five card
tarot spread I created just for you at the beginning of this
(04:22):
year, you can get that by joining my newsletter list.
Biweekly newsletter always has the most up to date information
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And if you don't already know, Iam a sex and relationships
therapist seeing clients virtually all over Washington
State. I love working with queer, Polly
and witchy clients. If you'd like to work with a
therapist that doesn't judge you, is witchy just like you,
(04:45):
and helps you learn how to deal with anxiety, chronic pain or
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journey. So you can find the links for
any of these offers in the show notes or on my website,
camilleasaunders.com/everyday Tarot, in addition to the images
of the cards I pull on each episode.
(05:05):
All right, so let's get into it.We are in season 11 here where
I'm talking all about tarot and Plant Allies.
If you haven't listened to my other seasons yet, you can check
those out. I've done seasons on tarot
basics. I've gone through all the Major
Arcana cards and every card in every suit.
So I've done 78 different episodes about the tarot cards.
(05:26):
I've talked about tarot and pop culture.
I've gone through common tarot spreads and last season I talked
all about tarot and witchcraft. So like I said, we are here in
season 11 where I'm talking about tarot and plant allies,
and today I'm talking about tarot and calendula.
So what do you know about calendula?
(05:47):
So I'm going to do a plant description.
We're going to talk about plant magic, the relation to tarot,
and then some uses of calendula.So all right.
And today I'll be reading from wertzandcunning.com.
I'll link it in the show notes and they have a calendula plant
profile on there. So if you don't know, calendula
(06:09):
is in the Marigold family. So sometimes it's called pot
Marigold, ruggles, holigold, bullseye, Mary Bud, ringelblum,
Summer's bride or spouses solace.
Those are different names for it.
They do sort of look like marigolds.
They have the kind of those signature orange and red flower
(06:32):
petals. Let's see, what else?
Yeah. I love calendula.
It's a super easy plant to grow.It creates tons of seeds that
are quite large and unique, so they're very easy to find.
I give out calendula seeds as like a very like anyone can grow
(06:53):
them. They're beautiful flower.
If you never use them for anything else, they're nice to
look at. They self seed pretty easily.
Like I said, the seeds are easy to collect.
They dry right on the plant and you can take them, you can sort
of crunch them off if you'd like.
They sort of look like a, almostlike a scythe, like a, like a
(07:14):
curved Crescent sort of thing, alittle more jagged than that.
But yeah, that's sort of what they look like.
Um, they are one of the first flowers for me to bloom in the
spring, like at least in my raised beds, not like a bulb and
it's so pretty like, and there'sall different kinds of colors.
(07:36):
Some have red in the middle, some have orange, some have
yellow, more like a sunflower. I love the feel of it.
It's very soft, but it's also resinous, which I'll talk about
and some of its usage. But again, it's super easy.
It goes to seed, pops up again. And like I said, I used to when
I would do networking events, I would just like give them out to
(07:58):
folks to remember being by because I love calendula.
And again, you can have 12 seeds, plant them all and you'll
have calendula seeds forever. I would say if you leave them
outside and kind of let them continue, yeah.
So it is sort of a, like I said,a resinous plant, which just
(08:19):
means it's kind of sticky. It's a prized healer of wounds.
It's often used in herbalism. It's like a often made into a
salve or into an oil to make into a salve.
It's very gentle on the skin. So it's very, it's OK for
sensitive skin. So some things are not, but
(08:40):
calendula is very gentle. It also helps heals, cuts or
recovery from procedures or anything that's kind of an open
wound. And again, it's very gentle.
There are some plants that are good at healing and are
extremely quick and you have to kind of be careful.
That's like comfrey. I'll probably talk about comfrey
(09:00):
as another plant in this season as a plant ally, wonderful plant
also. But you have to be careful with
comfrey because if you heal the wound and it's infected inside
or you heal like it will heal soquickly that if it's not like
clean, like a clean wound, you might trap things underneath.
(09:20):
And I've actually used a SAV that had a mix of plants in it
when I got a cut on my finger, which thankfully did not, you
know, have anything in it that Iwas worried like it was a cut
from like a kitchen knife. So it, it was a very clean cut.
I wasn't worried about any plantmaterial or stuff like that in
(09:41):
it. But it's still again, it healed.
I, I wasn't paying attention to the salve.
I was gifted it and it said it was good on like for healing
things. So I put it on and it actually
healed so quickly that it almosthurts to like it made the skin
really tight on my finger and italmost hurts to like like
(10:07):
totally because the finger is solike Bendy's and has so many
little joints and, you know, wrinkles and areas like that.
Yeah, I actually like, should not have used that then.
And again, I'm talking about comfrey.
So calendula, unlike comfrey, isvery gentle.
It it will again be good for healing.
(10:29):
It helps promote actually like the tissues of healing.
It has tissue repairing qualities.
It also helps prevent against infections and like staph and it
also is a very like sunny plant.It has a lot of like We'll talk
about in kind of its magical qualities, but just like
(10:49):
sunflowers or I'll talk about St.
John's War as well, other sort of sunny flowers that bloom
around solstice. It is also a bringing
restorative sunlight to the bodyand spirit after a period of
damp and unwanted darkness is kind of what this says here.
It can also be good for helping clearing congestion from lymph
(11:12):
nodes and gut. As a cleansing herb and a
digestive aid, it can help cleanout like parasites or toxins can
help with, yeah, like stomach issues.
In Aria Vedic, they talk about calendula as reducing excess
Pitta and kaffa from the body. So if you know Aria Vedic
(11:36):
medicine at all, Pitta is sort of like the fiery energy and
kaffa is sort of the like earthy, sometimes stagnant
energy a bit more. And so it's a cooling, but also
kind of like promotes movement, like moving through things.
(11:57):
So again, good for digestion or respiratory things where you're
like kind of trying to like movethings along.
Yeah. So yeah, that is sort of some of
its qualities. Again, if you if you interact
with the plant itself or you pick a flower, the easiest way
to pick it, I find it's kind of to like slip the stem in between
(12:18):
two of your like I like to do myring finger and my middle
finger. And then if you just sort of
like pull, so you do that the the bloom is like above your
fingers and then you just kind of pull up and it will like pop
off of the stem. You can also cut it of course.
But often when I'm harvesting calendula especially, I like to
(12:39):
use it in oil infusions. I make oil, I do oil cleansing
for the cleansing method for my face everyday.
And I infuse one oil for half the year with calendula and the
other half of the year I do Saint John's Wort.
So I'll talk about Saint John's wort in another episode, which
(13:00):
is also a sunny sort of herb or plant medicine.
But yeah, calendra, if you do that and sort of pop it off like
that, you will sometimes your fingers will get sort of sticky
and it smells pretty strongly. And I guess not, not like just
(13:20):
touching it. I guess like you can smell it as
a pretty unique smell. I'm trying to think what it
smells like. I'm just very used to it.
But I have a ton of calendula inmy yard.
It loves to self seed, like I said.
So if you plant it once, it might be there for a while, but
it's pretty easy to pull up. Lots of insects like it.
(13:41):
It's like I said, it's really good for skin conditions.
I've actually made Sabs for the first time this year and so it
can be really, it's a very gentle sav.
I use it when I have dry skin orthings like that.
But yeah, it's also like hydrating like a hydrosol, so
(14:02):
that's another great use for it.Anyway, let's get into a bit
about the plant. Oh yeah.
And I guess let's talk more about what it looks like.
So like I said, talked about theflowers.
So it sort of has orange petals like different color insides the
flowers can be. I'm trying to think how big like
maybe as big as like the palm ofyour hand.
(14:22):
So pretty big. I would say most are smaller
than that. And I did, I picked one earlier
and it actually they will sort of like close up.
They're a little bit of a plant that this one's got tiny little
bugs on it. The bugs do like it, I would
say. I don't even know.
They're so tiny. I just picked this plant like an
(14:45):
hour ago. So the bugs are still leaving.
But yeah, bees will come to it and other things.
It's very nice for that. It has like a flat inner part of
it, like a sunflower wood where it has a bunch of little, I
don't know exactly what they're called, but yeah, it's a it's a
very nice to touch too. It feels very soft, almost like
(15:06):
like like velvet fabric kind of soft.
And yeah, what also green stemmed gets sort of large
leaves, but every part of the plant is sort of that resinous.
So again, if you interact with it, if you pull out the plant,
you will get that smell of the calendula, which I really like
(15:26):
and am familiar with now and apparently can't describe.
It sort of has like a green likea fresh smell.
And then you also get sort of sorry if you can hear me
smelling through the microphone here, but you'll also get sort
of a not fruity, but a very light, again, like it.
(15:46):
It does make me think that if you ate it, it would be bitter,
but it smells pretty good. I like it anyway, and a plant
that, yeah, I don't think I everknew anything about before, kind
of being a gardener and learningabout different pollinator
plants. And like I said, since I've
planted it, I've been very familiar because it loves to
(16:07):
grow. It's very easy to grow.
Again, like I said, if there's any seeds I give to people, I
guess, like squash and pumpkin seeds are pretty easy.
I just don't always have an abundance of them that I want to
share. I like to eat the seeds of those
a lot. But calendula is like #1 I guess
like maybe the other one would be sunflowers, just because
people are really familiar with sunflowers.
(16:28):
But calendula is super great. It can even handle pretty cold
temperatures. There's, like I said, different
colors. I really like it.
And yeah, it can be used as likegarlands.
It's very pretty. It's also protective, keeps out
unwanted energy. You can even use the plant in
like incense or infusions in that sort of way.
(16:51):
So yeah, let's talk about some of the plant magic of it all.
Let's see. So, yeah.
What sort of like the essence ofcalendula?
Yeah, it's pretty. What would I say?
(17:12):
It has like nice energies. It's very abundant, like I said,
so it can be very fun to work with in that way.
Like I said, it's really easy tolike grow, easy to give the
seeds away to like spread the love.
So that's a fun way of abundanceof it.
It's very warm and light. I would say like the plant, the
(17:35):
flowers itself, but also just the plant it talks about on this
blog, the warts and cutting one that that can be used for folks
that like struggle with self-expression.
So sort of who've maybe been shot down a lot or been told
that they're too much. It says Calendula helps us to
(17:56):
make wise decisions on who we are and who we relate to through
accepting the beauty of our intensity and sensitivity and
finding others who are ready to do the same.
So I love that, right? Like it's sort of this like
unapologetic plant in that way. And yeah, one of the things I
(18:17):
really like, it's beautiful dried and it's easy to dry out.
You can just pick all the flowers, put them out.
I have like like on sheets or onanything that's easy to set the
plants on. Again, they do, they are sort of
resinous. So just be warned that anything
you put them on will be sort of sticky.
But I have a dehydrator so I generally I'll pick a nine trays
(18:42):
worth which is helping. My dehydrator is of calendula
flowers because I certainly haveenough now that I can do that
probably a couple times in the summer.
I could do it more if I wanted. I just don't actually need that
many flowers for my infusions personally.
And so I pick 9 trays usually all in one day.
I put all the flowers face down on the tray.
(19:03):
You know, they're very pretty face up, but they will sort of
like even the one I picked earlier is it was flat when I
picked it and now it's all kind of like closed up to where you
can't even really see the middle.
And unless I like pull apart thepetals where, and maybe that's
just because it's inside and it's darker in here and, and so
maybe it's just attuned to the sun a bit.
(19:25):
But but yeah, I'll put the like flowers face down with the stem
kind of up at the top. And you can let them sit out in
the sun for a little bit to kindof like start to dry or in the
shade if you'd like to do it fora long time.
And then I load them into my dehydrator and process them for
24, maybe even 48 hours depending on when I do it.
(19:47):
I live in a fairly humid place most of the time, so sometimes
the dehydrator takes a long time.
But you can also just use like you could probably use like tea
towels or anything that's got some air flow in it like straw
baskets, things like that to dehydrate them if you are going
to use them in oil infusions. It's really important to make
(20:09):
sure that the plants are fully dried out so that they're sort
of like crunchy and crispy, thatthey don't have any because they
are so resinous. They actually have like a lot of
kind of oil or moisture in them.And so you really have to make
sure they're dry before you put them in oil because otherwise
they can get moldy. So you don't want that to
happen. And so then, yeah, once I do
(20:32):
that personally, then I like fill a whole jar, however big.
Last year I did a whole half 1/2gallon jar of flowers, which is
quite a lot of flowers, probably2 dehydrator, dehydrator rounds
worth. And then you pour oil in the top
of it to kind of cover them all.And then you let it infuse for a
(20:55):
while. And most infusions you do in the
dark, so in a cabinet or something.
Some of the more sunny plants like Saint John's Wort is
traditionally done in the sunlight calendula.
You could probably do that as well.
Generally I leave my infusions for a while.
So for Saint John's Ware I will do it in the in the sunlight
because it actually helps it change color.
(21:17):
Saint John's Ware is yellow whenyou pick the flowers, but when
you infuse it in oil, there are these like red filaments or
aspects to the flower that the oil changes to red colored,
which is kind of wild or like anorangey red.
And so I think the the sun exposure is part of that process
of it breaking down. But for most oil infusions where
(21:39):
you're infusing plants and it, you don't necessarily need it in
the sun the whole time to get the full benefit.
But I, I'm skipping around here talking about both the uses in
the same as the plant magic. But that is the fun part about
plants is that a lot of the magic of them can be in general
use of them, which I think is very fun, especially as a
(22:00):
gardener and the kind of like a right.
I have this the Hearthwitch's compendium, which we'll get into
and look up a couple other things to use calendula for.
But I'm definitely a hearthwitchkind of person, like blending
garden, like plant green witch with like kitchen witch and also
just sort of like using what I have and really infusing magic
(22:23):
and plant magic into like every aspect of my life, right?
Like putting my oil that I put on my face every day is infused
with the plant magic. And right other plants I've
talked about like Rosemary, right?
I'm eating it. I'm making salt with it and
putting it on meats to brine or or like, you know, to salt brine
(22:47):
before I cook them or I'm yeah, what else?
Where I'm putting them on my altar.
Sometimes calendula can be very pretty, especially dried.
You can actually make like garlands with it.
Like, you might put on a Christmas tree or, you know,
drape above your doorway or something, like you could with
marigolds as well because they are in that same family.
(23:10):
But yeah, what are some other sort of magical aspects of it?
What else do I have to share here?
Yeah, I don't know. It's just like, it's a very
calming, like nice, sunny, happyplant and I love that about it.
(23:35):
Yeah, like it's personality. Yeah.
Let's move into relation to tarot.
So on the same blog, the Warts and cunning.com, under the
Calendula plant profile, they also talk about that cards
associated with it are Temperance because of the
Sacredness of balanced incarnation, Judgment for
(23:58):
consciousness raising, and the Four of Wands for celebrations,
which I love. They also talk about the sevens,
the healing of all wounds. So kind of this intersection,
right, of herbalism and tarot. So yeah, I really loved that I
pulled all of these cards today from the Therapist Who Tarot
deck because I really feel like it's also a gentle deck.
(24:22):
It's very artsy. It's done in watercolor.
And we have a lot of actually like angelic vibes, like
temperance is often depicted like with the perhaps Angel
wings and that is the way this one is.
And also it talks about protection, right?
So we have that aspect of it. We have judgment about
(24:43):
consciousness raising, which again in this they depict the
folks with Angel wings, like about awakening and then the
four of wands here that they talk about which wands, right?
Sort of that creative active energy.
And this one, the word they use for it is marriage.
They talk about where do you find community?
Which of your friendships do youmost value and what should you
(25:04):
be celebrating? Which I love thinking about that
again, because part of the things I love about Calendula is
sharing it with others. It's probably one of my most
shared plants. Like I said, I have made, you
know, all the plants I'm talkingabout this season I grow, I use,
I consume in different ways. So they're all very familiar to
me. But calendula, right, like I
(25:26):
said, I pretty right now, I use it daily in my face oil.
I see it every day in my garden.I have huge amounts of it in my
garden, both in the beds. I have a plant right now that's
just like growing out of the concrete and like, some a crack
in the concrete that's like, right at the base of my house,
(25:47):
which is hilarious. And it's just, yeah, it really
like is a celebration, both in color with the bright orange
flowers and the green stems. And although in the Marigold
family it grows pretty differently than Marigold,
Marigold tends to be a lot more bushy.
It takes a long time, I would say.
(26:08):
And it's a little bit more finicky to grow from seed.
And the seeds look very different.
Marigold seeds are like little like Spears, like they have a
like a head on them and like a tail and they're very almost
like sharp, not really, but likewhen you plant them, you have to
(26:28):
make sure to plant them sort of like vertically just because of
the way that they grow. They do sort of smell similar
marigolds in calendula, probablybecause they're in the same
family. But marigolds, I think I've
often been bred to be like multicolor or things like that.
They also have a bit of a different kind of stem and
they're just like a bushier version, I guess, of the plant.
(26:53):
Calendula, I think is probably amore wild or less bred version
of it. That's my assumption.
I don't actually know that. But calendula is not necessarily
a thing I see in like garden centers a lot, unlike marigolds.
Marigolds are often there, but Iactually really like calendula.
I marigolds are very pretty. I like growing them near my
(27:16):
tomatoes and having them in the summer.
But calendula for me blooms for like 6 months of the year,
sometimes like 8 months of the year.
It actually for me likes a bit more of the like spring, fall
temperatures, a little bit more rain.
You know, it gets good sun in the summer, which it likes, but
(27:39):
it also goes to seed pretty fastin the summer.
So it produces a lot of flowers.If you take the flowers off like
dead heading them, that will encourage them to grow more.
And you can spread the seeds I just took out.
I like dead headed a bunch. And then I went and put all the
seeds out on a tray and put themin my garage to dry.
And I'll be filling an entire prescription bottle worth of
(28:03):
calendula in my seed storage because again, it's a seed I
love to give away. It's very easy to grow and
almost anyone, even if they don't want to eat any plants or
have raised beds, you can grow it in a tiny pot and it's still
very beautiful and again, produces really nice flowers.
So that's its relation to tarot.So yeah, let me think about or
(28:27):
look up some other uses of calendula.
Like I said, it's very often used in skin care because if
it's very gentle and sort of resinous qualities of the flower
itself. Let's see here.
I'm looking in the, like I said earlier, the Hearth, which is
(28:48):
compendium by Anna Franklin, a great book and one that I'm
really enjoying the season. It's perfect for the season.
I can almost find all the information I need in my
episodes from it for each plant,which I love that we love a well
resourced and well researched book.
(29:11):
Yeah, let's see here. So I guess you can also use some
calendula to make different kinds of wine.
Let's see what else? There's a lot of wine recipes in
here, but I don't think wine is necessarily like super
accessible to most people to make.
(29:32):
Yeah, Calendula can be used as like a good, like dying plant.
It's not super strong, but it kind of has that again, like
just like an orangey, a light orangey yellow tint to it.
So it can be used that way. They have a recipe here using
(29:52):
dried calendula petals in a Mandarin bath bomb.
So it has a tablespoon of citricacid powder, 3 tablespoons of
baking soda, some yellow food coloring, a few drops of
Mandarin essential oil, and a pinch of dried calendula petals.
And yeah, you to make bath bombslike that, usually just mix it
(30:15):
all up in a bowl and then addingthe flower petals last, adding a
little water to bring the mixture together and form the
sort of sphere that you do. You can use a spray bottle to
kind of make the sphere and thenyou kind of put it into a mold
and let it set overnight. And that's kind of how they
work. So if you ever want to make your
(30:35):
own bath bombs at home, they're not super hard, especially just
because they're made of like citric acid powder and baking
soda. And then you just add your
again, your plants or your food coloring or your other things.
From there you can make all different kinds.
So that is a super fun and pretty accessible thing to do.
You can also always just make bath salts if you don't want to
(30:57):
make the actual like the the fizzy part of it, which would be
a similar sort of recipe, but you would just be using salt
instead of the baking soda mixture there, which again,
using Epsom salts, you can use again, the calendula in like the
shower or the bath. So using the petals as like a
(31:21):
skin soothing aspect. I wanted to see if there's any
like eating of the calendula because that's I'm definitely
less familiar with those aspectsof it.
Let's see here. Let's see.
(31:42):
Oh yeah, there's a calendula andchamomile gel you can make that.
They say it's good for like someskin things.
Again, sorry I lost my page there.
What else? What else?
Just flipping through my book here and looking at different
(32:03):
things. Again, lots mostly skin uses
here because again, that's what's really good for.
I think eating it at all or using it to like drink out of
would be pretty bitter from whatI can tell.
But yeah, calendula is associated with Beltane, I
(32:27):
believe. Yeah.
So it can be a common oil or used at that time of year for
celebration. Let's look at this one.
So there's a home protection Talisman you can make where they
(32:48):
say you can use Bay leaves, dried calendula petals, holly
leaves, Rowan berries and some dried verveain and then use an
acorn and a white cloth and you kind of bundle it all together,
assemble it at the full moon, place it in your porch, kitchen
or highest part of the house forprotection.
So calendula also has that sort of like protecting again, I
(33:12):
would say it's like it's like the mom friend of the group,
right? It's looking out for you.
It's making sure everyone's got the sunscreen when they go out,
that they've got water, right? The it's not so much this like
boundaries protection, like a Yarrow.
That's like, get out of here, like I'm going to fight you.
Calendula's a little more gentle.
It's like, hey, babe, like you good.
(33:34):
Like I'm checking in on everyone.
We're making sure everyone's OK,which we love that.
OK, so let's dive in and see what the cards have to say.
So what does Calendula have to say to us?
What does Calendula have to share with us today?
And let me grab a deck real quick.
(33:54):
I'm going to grab one of my one of my more gentle decks, really
versatile deck, the Anima Mundi Tarot deck by Megan Wyra London.
I love using this deck for folksthat are maybe less familiar
with tarot or more skeptical or just aren't into necessarily all
the witchy aspects so much. But this deck has a lot of
(34:17):
animals in it, which a lot of people are actually very
familiar with animal symbolism and don't necessarily think of
that as magic. Although I would more like
animism that all animals, right,have like spirits about them and
that we sort of categorize them.So right, Obviously plants can
be similar to that, but people are just perhaps less familiar.
(34:41):
So Calendula, what do you have to share with us today?
And I pulled the 2 of wands reversed.
OK, so let's see, we have a beautiful image on here of two
wands that are covered in flowers, almost looking like
trees out, almost looking like in the desert, looks kind of
(35:04):
barren. And then we see some rocky like
mountains. And then we see this like
beautiful like, like the Milky Way in the sky, like in a dark
sky. I don't totally know if it is
the Milky Way, but that's kind of what it looks like to me.
Two of wands. And we are in reversal here.
So reversed it says it's about or No, Yeah, we're in reverse.
(35:26):
So it says reversed. It's about fear of the unknown,
disorganization, and lack of planning.
So upright, the two of Wands would be right.
If you think of the initial spark of the Ace of Wands as
you're ready to start putting your ambitions to use, you're
taking your ideas and turning them into tangible plans.
This is a card of exiting your comfort zone and broadening your
(35:47):
horizons, perhaps with travel, anew career, further education,
etcetera. So upright it's about discovery,
moving forward, travel and planning.
And reverse is a little more of this like hesitation or fear,
some disorganization, some lack of planning.
So Calendula's right, helping usout here again, the mom friend
(36:08):
saying like, hey, OK, you know, maybe you're going on vacation
soon or you're moving or you're getting a new career.
Like what's the plan? Like have you thought through
everything right? Have you, have you gathered all
your boxes together for moving? Like, have you thought
everything through? Like, I just want to make sure
you're going to be OK. That's kind of the vibe I get
(36:28):
from this card. So Calendal is out here looking
out for us, making sure we're we're getting sleep, we're
taking care of ourselves and that we're planning ahead,
right? Can be really fun to get excited
about new things. And then sometimes we let that
excitement take over and we don't actually get into the
reality of what it's going to look like to make all of it
happen, right? Like a new career can be really
(36:50):
exciting, or travel can be really exciting and requires
planning, right? OK, I'm going to leave my
flights at this time. OK, I got to leave the house,
right? I got to be at the airport at
this time. I got to leave the house at this
time. OK, I got a pack and what am I
packing? Do I need to do laundry before I
pack? So you're working backwards in
hours, right? I'm definitely feeling that this
week. I'm going to be going on
(37:10):
vacation towards the end of thisweek.
So I'm recording some episodes ahead of time and I'm already
like, Oh yeah, let me get the laundry started so I can get the
packing started so we could packthe car so we can get ready the
night before. So I'm definitely feeling that.
So thank you, Colangela for reminding me and reminding us.
(37:31):
And if you'd like to join me on the journey of using the Tarot
for transformation, you can click on the link in the show
notes to indicate your interest in receiving more info.
We'll be working together for 12weeks of calls and journaling to
discover what happens when we want to transform our lives
through the Tarot. And like I said, I'm thinking of
starting this at the end of August, so no worries.
(37:53):
You still have some time to signup to get more information, to
hop on a call with me if you want to learn more before you
sign up, anything like that. So links for the tarot decks I
talk about will always be in theshow notes and on my website if
you'd like to look at them or purchase them.
And thanks for joining me today on Everyday Tarot.
Just as a reminder, the podcast comes out daily, Monday through
Friday for all of 2025. You can e-mail me
(38:16):
me@camilleasaunders.com with your thoughts, questions, and
more. All right, I'll see you soon.
Bye bye.
Welcome to the Everyday Tarot Podcast, your daily dive into
the vine wisdom of the tarot. I'm your host Camille, a
Saunders healer, tarot enthusiast, and your local witch
next door. And today I'm talking about
tarot and calendula. Whether you're seasoned tarot
reader and or just starting to explore, this podcast offers
daily insights, intuitive messages, and practical advice
(00:21):
drawn from the cards. Each episode is designed to help
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TuneIn every time, Monday through Friday for fresh
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(00:41):
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(01:03):
course this summer. I'll be starting at the end of
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notes to sign up For more information.
We will be doing calls once a week for 12 weeks and going
through Drea Blooms Tarot for transformation volume.
It's quite large where, yeah, you work through all of the
(01:25):
Major Arcana cards. So we'll just be working
through, you know, about half ofthem doing 12.
But we'll be doing calls every week, I'll be leading it, and
we'll be sort of working throughthis book together, talking
about the cards, what it means for transformation of ourselves,
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(01:47):
If you can't make the calls live, there will be recording
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If you love the show, the best way to support it for free is by
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(02:07):
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I had a great time out at TacomaPride this past weekend where I
got to see some podcast listeners live and in person,
which was fun. I heard from some folks that
they know other people that listen to the podcast or they've
been referred to a podcast, which I love to hear people that
(02:29):
I don't even know, which was so cool.
I got to introduce people to my podcast, talk about my local,
you know, meet up group offerings.
So yeah, if you're local to the greater Puget Sound area, you
can check out the Let's Talk Tarot meet Up group for the
latest event postings. But our next one coming up, I
believe will be on July 27th from 1:00 to 3:00 PM.
(02:53):
We'll be doing just a social tarot hangout at the old hangout
in the McMenamins in Tacoma. So it's a fun tiki bar lounge
area. And yeah, so bring your tarot
cards, bring your questions, bring your tarot obsession, and
come talk to us all about tarot for a couple hours at the end of
(03:16):
this month. If you are not local to me, you
can join the Patreon if you're interested in engaging a bit
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Collective terror readings for free every month now, and you
can always watch those. Those will be on YouTube,
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(03:40):
If you join the lovers level of the podcast on the Patreon, you
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So if you want an individual card pulled for you once a month
(04:00):
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(04:22):
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And if you don't already know, Iam a sex and relationships
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(04:45):
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any of these offers in the show notes or on my website,
camilleasaunders.com/everyday Tarot, in addition to the images
of the cards I pull on each episode.
(05:05):
All right, so let's get into it.We are in season 11 here where
I'm talking all about tarot and Plant Allies.
If you haven't listened to my other seasons yet, you can check
those out. I've done seasons on tarot
basics. I've gone through all the Major
Arcana cards and every card in every suit.
So I've done 78 different episodes about the tarot cards.
(05:26):
I've talked about tarot and pop culture.
I've gone through common tarot spreads and last season I talked
all about tarot and witchcraft. So like I said, we are here in
season 11 where I'm talking about tarot and plant allies,
and today I'm talking about tarot and calendula.
So what do you know about calendula?
(05:47):
So I'm going to do a plant description.
We're going to talk about plant magic, the relation to tarot,
and then some uses of calendula.So all right.
And today I'll be reading from wertzandcunning.com.
I'll link it in the show notes and they have a calendula plant
profile on there. So if you don't know, calendula
(06:09):
is in the Marigold family. So sometimes it's called pot
Marigold, ruggles, holigold, bullseye, Mary Bud, ringelblum,
Summer's bride or spouses solace.
Those are different names for it.
They do sort of look like marigolds.
They have the kind of those signature orange and red flower
(06:32):
petals. Let's see, what else?
Yeah. I love calendula.
It's a super easy plant to grow.It creates tons of seeds that
are quite large and unique, so they're very easy to find.
I give out calendula seeds as like a very like anyone can grow
(06:53):
them. They're beautiful flower.
If you never use them for anything else, they're nice to
look at. They self seed pretty easily.
Like I said, the seeds are easy to collect.
They dry right on the plant and you can take them, you can sort
of crunch them off if you'd like.
They sort of look like a, almostlike a scythe, like a, like a
(07:14):
curved Crescent sort of thing, alittle more jagged than that.
But yeah, that's sort of what they look like.
Um, they are one of the first flowers for me to bloom in the
spring, like at least in my raised beds, not like a bulb and
it's so pretty like, and there'sall different kinds of colors.
(07:36):
Some have red in the middle, some have orange, some have
yellow, more like a sunflower. I love the feel of it.
It's very soft, but it's also resinous, which I'll talk about
and some of its usage. But again, it's super easy.
It goes to seed, pops up again. And like I said, I used to when
I would do networking events, I would just like give them out to
(07:58):
folks to remember being by because I love calendula.
And again, you can have 12 seeds, plant them all and you'll
have calendula seeds forever. I would say if you leave them
outside and kind of let them continue, yeah.
So it is sort of a, like I said,a resinous plant, which just
(08:19):
means it's kind of sticky. It's a prized healer of wounds.
It's often used in herbalism. It's like a often made into a
salve or into an oil to make into a salve.
It's very gentle on the skin. So it's very, it's OK for
sensitive skin. So some things are not, but
(08:40):
calendula is very gentle. It also helps heals, cuts or
recovery from procedures or anything that's kind of an open
wound. And again, it's very gentle.
There are some plants that are good at healing and are
extremely quick and you have to kind of be careful.
That's like comfrey. I'll probably talk about comfrey
(09:00):
as another plant in this season as a plant ally, wonderful plant
also. But you have to be careful with
comfrey because if you heal the wound and it's infected inside
or you heal like it will heal soquickly that if it's not like
clean, like a clean wound, you might trap things underneath.
(09:20):
And I've actually used a SAV that had a mix of plants in it
when I got a cut on my finger, which thankfully did not, you
know, have anything in it that Iwas worried like it was a cut
from like a kitchen knife. So it, it was a very clean cut.
I wasn't worried about any plantmaterial or stuff like that in
(09:41):
it. But it's still again, it healed.
I, I wasn't paying attention to the salve.
I was gifted it and it said it was good on like for healing
things. So I put it on and it actually
healed so quickly that it almosthurts to like it made the skin
really tight on my finger and italmost hurts to like like
(10:07):
totally because the finger is solike Bendy's and has so many
little joints and, you know, wrinkles and areas like that.
Yeah, I actually like, should not have used that then.
And again, I'm talking about comfrey.
So calendula, unlike comfrey, isvery gentle.
It it will again be good for healing.
(10:29):
It helps promote actually like the tissues of healing.
It has tissue repairing qualities.
It also helps prevent against infections and like staph and it
also is a very like sunny plant.It has a lot of like We'll talk
about in kind of its magical qualities, but just like
(10:49):
sunflowers or I'll talk about St.
John's War as well, other sort of sunny flowers that bloom
around solstice. It is also a bringing
restorative sunlight to the bodyand spirit after a period of
damp and unwanted darkness is kind of what this says here.
It can also be good for helping clearing congestion from lymph
(11:12):
nodes and gut. As a cleansing herb and a
digestive aid, it can help cleanout like parasites or toxins can
help with, yeah, like stomach issues.
In Aria Vedic, they talk about calendula as reducing excess
Pitta and kaffa from the body. So if you know Aria Vedic
(11:36):
medicine at all, Pitta is sort of like the fiery energy and
kaffa is sort of the like earthy, sometimes stagnant
energy a bit more. And so it's a cooling, but also
kind of like promotes movement, like moving through things.
(11:57):
So again, good for digestion or respiratory things where you're
like kind of trying to like movethings along.
Yeah. So yeah, that is sort of some of
its qualities. Again, if you if you interact
with the plant itself or you pick a flower, the easiest way
to pick it, I find it's kind of to like slip the stem in between
(12:18):
two of your like I like to do myring finger and my middle
finger. And then if you just sort of
like pull, so you do that the the bloom is like above your
fingers and then you just kind of pull up and it will like pop
off of the stem. You can also cut it of course.
But often when I'm harvesting calendula especially, I like to
(12:39):
use it in oil infusions. I make oil, I do oil cleansing
for the cleansing method for my face everyday.
And I infuse one oil for half the year with calendula and the
other half of the year I do Saint John's Wort.
So I'll talk about Saint John's wort in another episode, which
(13:00):
is also a sunny sort of herb or plant medicine.
But yeah, calendra, if you do that and sort of pop it off like
that, you will sometimes your fingers will get sort of sticky
and it smells pretty strongly. And I guess not, not like just
(13:20):
touching it. I guess like you can smell it as
a pretty unique smell. I'm trying to think what it
smells like. I'm just very used to it.
But I have a ton of calendula inmy yard.
It loves to self seed, like I said.
So if you plant it once, it might be there for a while, but
it's pretty easy to pull up. Lots of insects like it.
(13:41):
It's like I said, it's really good for skin conditions.
I've actually made Sabs for the first time this year and so it
can be really, it's a very gentle sav.
I use it when I have dry skin orthings like that.
But yeah, it's also like hydrating like a hydrosol, so
(14:02):
that's another great use for it.Anyway, let's get into a bit
about the plant. Oh yeah.
And I guess let's talk more about what it looks like.
So like I said, talked about theflowers.
So it sort of has orange petals like different color insides the
flowers can be. I'm trying to think how big like
maybe as big as like the palm ofyour hand.
(14:22):
So pretty big. I would say most are smaller
than that. And I did, I picked one earlier
and it actually they will sort of like close up.
They're a little bit of a plant that this one's got tiny little
bugs on it. The bugs do like it, I would
say. I don't even know.
They're so tiny. I just picked this plant like an
(14:45):
hour ago. So the bugs are still leaving.
But yeah, bees will come to it and other things.
It's very nice for that. It has like a flat inner part of
it, like a sunflower wood where it has a bunch of little, I
don't know exactly what they're called, but yeah, it's a it's a
very nice to touch too. It feels very soft, almost like
(15:06):
like like velvet fabric kind of soft.
And yeah, what also green stemmed gets sort of large
leaves, but every part of the plant is sort of that resinous.
So again, if you interact with it, if you pull out the plant,
you will get that smell of the calendula, which I really like
(15:26):
and am familiar with now and apparently can't describe.
It sort of has like a green likea fresh smell.
And then you also get sort of sorry if you can hear me
smelling through the microphone here, but you'll also get sort
of a not fruity, but a very light, again, like it.
(15:46):
It does make me think that if you ate it, it would be bitter,
but it smells pretty good. I like it anyway, and a plant
that, yeah, I don't think I everknew anything about before, kind
of being a gardener and learningabout different pollinator
plants. And like I said, since I've
planted it, I've been very familiar because it loves to
(16:07):
grow. It's very easy to grow.
Again, like I said, if there's any seeds I give to people, I
guess, like squash and pumpkin seeds are pretty easy.
I just don't always have an abundance of them that I want to
share. I like to eat the seeds of those
a lot. But calendula is like #1 I guess
like maybe the other one would be sunflowers, just because
people are really familiar with sunflowers.
(16:28):
But calendula is super great. It can even handle pretty cold
temperatures. There's, like I said, different
colors. I really like it.
And yeah, it can be used as likegarlands.
It's very pretty. It's also protective, keeps out
unwanted energy. You can even use the plant in
like incense or infusions in that sort of way.
(16:51):
So yeah, let's talk about some of the plant magic of it all.
Let's see. So, yeah.
What sort of like the essence ofcalendula?
Yeah, it's pretty. What would I say?
(17:12):
It has like nice energies. It's very abundant, like I said,
so it can be very fun to work with in that way.
Like I said, it's really easy tolike grow, easy to give the
seeds away to like spread the love.
So that's a fun way of abundanceof it.
It's very warm and light. I would say like the plant, the
(17:35):
flowers itself, but also just the plant it talks about on this
blog, the warts and cutting one that that can be used for folks
that like struggle with self-expression.
So sort of who've maybe been shot down a lot or been told
that they're too much. It says Calendula helps us to
(17:56):
make wise decisions on who we are and who we relate to through
accepting the beauty of our intensity and sensitivity and
finding others who are ready to do the same.
So I love that, right? Like it's sort of this like
unapologetic plant in that way. And yeah, one of the things I
(18:17):
really like, it's beautiful dried and it's easy to dry out.
You can just pick all the flowers, put them out.
I have like like on sheets or onanything that's easy to set the
plants on. Again, they do, they are sort of
resinous. So just be warned that anything
you put them on will be sort of sticky.
But I have a dehydrator so I generally I'll pick a nine trays
(18:42):
worth which is helping. My dehydrator is of calendula
flowers because I certainly haveenough now that I can do that
probably a couple times in the summer.
I could do it more if I wanted. I just don't actually need that
many flowers for my infusions personally.
And so I pick 9 trays usually all in one day.
I put all the flowers face down on the tray.
(19:03):
You know, they're very pretty face up, but they will sort of
like even the one I picked earlier is it was flat when I
picked it and now it's all kind of like closed up to where you
can't even really see the middle.
And unless I like pull apart thepetals where, and maybe that's
just because it's inside and it's darker in here and, and so
maybe it's just attuned to the sun a bit.
(19:25):
But but yeah, I'll put the like flowers face down with the stem
kind of up at the top. And you can let them sit out in
the sun for a little bit to kindof like start to dry or in the
shade if you'd like to do it fora long time.
And then I load them into my dehydrator and process them for
24, maybe even 48 hours depending on when I do it.
(19:47):
I live in a fairly humid place most of the time, so sometimes
the dehydrator takes a long time.
But you can also just use like you could probably use like tea
towels or anything that's got some air flow in it like straw
baskets, things like that to dehydrate them if you are going
to use them in oil infusions. It's really important to make
(20:09):
sure that the plants are fully dried out so that they're sort
of like crunchy and crispy, thatthey don't have any because they
are so resinous. They actually have like a lot of
kind of oil or moisture in them.And so you really have to make
sure they're dry before you put them in oil because otherwise
they can get moldy. So you don't want that to
happen. And so then, yeah, once I do
(20:32):
that personally, then I like fill a whole jar, however big.
Last year I did a whole half 1/2gallon jar of flowers, which is
quite a lot of flowers, probably2 dehydrator, dehydrator rounds
worth. And then you pour oil in the top
of it to kind of cover them all.And then you let it infuse for a
(20:55):
while. And most infusions you do in the
dark, so in a cabinet or something.
Some of the more sunny plants like Saint John's Wort is
traditionally done in the sunlight calendula.
You could probably do that as well.
Generally I leave my infusions for a while.
So for Saint John's Ware I will do it in the in the sunlight
because it actually helps it change color.
(21:17):
Saint John's Ware is yellow whenyou pick the flowers, but when
you infuse it in oil, there are these like red filaments or
aspects to the flower that the oil changes to red colored,
which is kind of wild or like anorangey red.
And so I think the the sun exposure is part of that process
of it breaking down. But for most oil infusions where
(21:39):
you're infusing plants and it, you don't necessarily need it in
the sun the whole time to get the full benefit.
But I, I'm skipping around here talking about both the uses in
the same as the plant magic. But that is the fun part about
plants is that a lot of the magic of them can be in general
use of them, which I think is very fun, especially as a
(22:00):
gardener and the kind of like a right.
I have this the Hearthwitch's compendium, which we'll get into
and look up a couple other things to use calendula for.
But I'm definitely a hearthwitchkind of person, like blending
garden, like plant green witch with like kitchen witch and also
just sort of like using what I have and really infusing magic
(22:23):
and plant magic into like every aspect of my life, right?
Like putting my oil that I put on my face every day is infused
with the plant magic. And right other plants I've
talked about like Rosemary, right?
I'm eating it. I'm making salt with it and
putting it on meats to brine or or like, you know, to salt brine
(22:47):
before I cook them or I'm yeah, what else?
Where I'm putting them on my altar.
Sometimes calendula can be very pretty, especially dried.
You can actually make like garlands with it.
Like, you might put on a Christmas tree or, you know,
drape above your doorway or something, like you could with
marigolds as well because they are in that same family.
(23:10):
But yeah, what are some other sort of magical aspects of it?
What else do I have to share here?
Yeah, I don't know. It's just like, it's a very
calming, like nice, sunny, happyplant and I love that about it.
(23:35):
Yeah, like it's personality. Yeah.
Let's move into relation to tarot.
So on the same blog, the Warts and cunning.com, under the
Calendula plant profile, they also talk about that cards
associated with it are Temperance because of the
Sacredness of balanced incarnation, Judgment for
(23:58):
consciousness raising, and the Four of Wands for celebrations,
which I love. They also talk about the sevens,
the healing of all wounds. So kind of this intersection,
right, of herbalism and tarot. So yeah, I really loved that I
pulled all of these cards today from the Therapist Who Tarot
deck because I really feel like it's also a gentle deck.
(24:22):
It's very artsy. It's done in watercolor.
And we have a lot of actually like angelic vibes, like
temperance is often depicted like with the perhaps Angel
wings and that is the way this one is.
And also it talks about protection, right?
So we have that aspect of it. We have judgment about
(24:43):
consciousness raising, which again in this they depict the
folks with Angel wings, like about awakening and then the
four of wands here that they talk about which wands, right?
Sort of that creative active energy.
And this one, the word they use for it is marriage.
They talk about where do you find community?
Which of your friendships do youmost value and what should you
(25:04):
be celebrating? Which I love thinking about that
again, because part of the things I love about Calendula is
sharing it with others. It's probably one of my most
shared plants. Like I said, I have made, you
know, all the plants I'm talkingabout this season I grow, I use,
I consume in different ways. So they're all very familiar to
me. But calendula, right, like I
(25:26):
said, I pretty right now, I use it daily in my face oil.
I see it every day in my garden.I have huge amounts of it in my
garden, both in the beds. I have a plant right now that's
just like growing out of the concrete and like, some a crack
in the concrete that's like, right at the base of my house,
(25:47):
which is hilarious. And it's just, yeah, it really
like is a celebration, both in color with the bright orange
flowers and the green stems. And although in the Marigold
family it grows pretty differently than Marigold,
Marigold tends to be a lot more bushy.
It takes a long time, I would say.
(26:08):
And it's a little bit more finicky to grow from seed.
And the seeds look very different.
Marigold seeds are like little like Spears, like they have a
like a head on them and like a tail and they're very almost
like sharp, not really, but likewhen you plant them, you have to
(26:28):
make sure to plant them sort of like vertically just because of
the way that they grow. They do sort of smell similar
marigolds in calendula, probablybecause they're in the same
family. But marigolds, I think I've
often been bred to be like multicolor or things like that.
They also have a bit of a different kind of stem and
they're just like a bushier version, I guess, of the plant.
(26:53):
Calendula, I think is probably amore wild or less bred version
of it. That's my assumption.
I don't actually know that. But calendula is not necessarily
a thing I see in like garden centers a lot, unlike marigolds.
Marigolds are often there, but Iactually really like calendula.
I marigolds are very pretty. I like growing them near my
(27:16):
tomatoes and having them in the summer.
But calendula for me blooms for like 6 months of the year,
sometimes like 8 months of the year.
It actually for me likes a bit more of the like spring, fall
temperatures, a little bit more rain.
You know, it gets good sun in the summer, which it likes, but
(27:39):
it also goes to seed pretty fastin the summer.
So it produces a lot of flowers.If you take the flowers off like
dead heading them, that will encourage them to grow more.
And you can spread the seeds I just took out.
I like dead headed a bunch. And then I went and put all the
seeds out on a tray and put themin my garage to dry.
And I'll be filling an entire prescription bottle worth of
(28:03):
calendula in my seed storage because again, it's a seed I
love to give away. It's very easy to grow and
almost anyone, even if they don't want to eat any plants or
have raised beds, you can grow it in a tiny pot and it's still
very beautiful and again, produces really nice flowers.
So that's its relation to tarot.So yeah, let me think about or
(28:27):
look up some other uses of calendula.
Like I said, it's very often used in skin care because if
it's very gentle and sort of resinous qualities of the flower
itself. Let's see here.
I'm looking in the, like I said earlier, the Hearth, which is
(28:48):
compendium by Anna Franklin, a great book and one that I'm
really enjoying the season. It's perfect for the season.
I can almost find all the information I need in my
episodes from it for each plant,which I love that we love a well
resourced and well researched book.
(29:11):
Yeah, let's see here. So I guess you can also use some
calendula to make different kinds of wine.
Let's see what else? There's a lot of wine recipes in
here, but I don't think wine is necessarily like super
accessible to most people to make.
(29:32):
Yeah, Calendula can be used as like a good, like dying plant.
It's not super strong, but it kind of has that again, like
just like an orangey, a light orangey yellow tint to it.
So it can be used that way. They have a recipe here using
(29:52):
dried calendula petals in a Mandarin bath bomb.
So it has a tablespoon of citricacid powder, 3 tablespoons of
baking soda, some yellow food coloring, a few drops of
Mandarin essential oil, and a pinch of dried calendula petals.
And yeah, you to make bath bombslike that, usually just mix it
(30:15):
all up in a bowl and then addingthe flower petals last, adding a
little water to bring the mixture together and form the
sort of sphere that you do. You can use a spray bottle to
kind of make the sphere and thenyou kind of put it into a mold
and let it set overnight. And that's kind of how they
work. So if you ever want to make your
(30:35):
own bath bombs at home, they're not super hard, especially just
because they're made of like citric acid powder and baking
soda. And then you just add your
again, your plants or your food coloring or your other things.
From there you can make all different kinds.
So that is a super fun and pretty accessible thing to do.
You can also always just make bath salts if you don't want to
(30:57):
make the actual like the the fizzy part of it, which would be
a similar sort of recipe, but you would just be using salt
instead of the baking soda mixture there, which again,
using Epsom salts, you can use again, the calendula in like the
shower or the bath. So using the petals as like a
(31:21):
skin soothing aspect. I wanted to see if there's any
like eating of the calendula because that's I'm definitely
less familiar with those aspectsof it.
Let's see here. Let's see.
(31:42):
Oh yeah, there's a calendula andchamomile gel you can make that.
They say it's good for like someskin things.
Again, sorry I lost my page there.
What else? What else?
Just flipping through my book here and looking at different
(32:03):
things. Again, lots mostly skin uses
here because again, that's what's really good for.
I think eating it at all or using it to like drink out of
would be pretty bitter from whatI can tell.
But yeah, calendula is associated with Beltane, I
(32:27):
believe. Yeah.
So it can be a common oil or used at that time of year for
celebration. Let's look at this one.
So there's a home protection Talisman you can make where they
(32:48):
say you can use Bay leaves, dried calendula petals, holly
leaves, Rowan berries and some dried verveain and then use an
acorn and a white cloth and you kind of bundle it all together,
assemble it at the full moon, place it in your porch, kitchen
or highest part of the house forprotection.
So calendula also has that sort of like protecting again, I
(33:12):
would say it's like it's like the mom friend of the group,
right? It's looking out for you.
It's making sure everyone's got the sunscreen when they go out,
that they've got water, right? The it's not so much this like
boundaries protection, like a Yarrow.
That's like, get out of here, like I'm going to fight you.
Calendula's a little more gentle.
It's like, hey, babe, like you good.
(33:34):
Like I'm checking in on everyone.
We're making sure everyone's OK,which we love that.
OK, so let's dive in and see what the cards have to say.
So what does Calendula have to say to us?
What does Calendula have to share with us today?
And let me grab a deck real quick.
(33:54):
I'm going to grab one of my one of my more gentle decks, really
versatile deck, the Anima Mundi Tarot deck by Megan Wyra London.
I love using this deck for folksthat are maybe less familiar
with tarot or more skeptical or just aren't into necessarily all
the witchy aspects so much. But this deck has a lot of
(34:17):
animals in it, which a lot of people are actually very
familiar with animal symbolism and don't necessarily think of
that as magic. Although I would more like
animism that all animals, right,have like spirits about them and
that we sort of categorize them.So right, Obviously plants can
be similar to that, but people are just perhaps less familiar.
(34:41):
So Calendula, what do you have to share with us today?
And I pulled the 2 of wands reversed.
OK, so let's see, we have a beautiful image on here of two
wands that are covered in flowers, almost looking like
trees out, almost looking like in the desert, looks kind of
(35:04):
barren. And then we see some rocky like
mountains. And then we see this like
beautiful like, like the Milky Way in the sky, like in a dark
sky. I don't totally know if it is
the Milky Way, but that's kind of what it looks like to me.
Two of wands. And we are in reversal here.
So reversed it says it's about or No, Yeah, we're in reverse.
(35:26):
So it says reversed. It's about fear of the unknown,
disorganization, and lack of planning.
So upright, the two of Wands would be right.
If you think of the initial spark of the Ace of Wands as
you're ready to start putting your ambitions to use, you're
taking your ideas and turning them into tangible plans.
This is a card of exiting your comfort zone and broadening your
(35:47):
horizons, perhaps with travel, anew career, further education,
etcetera. So upright it's about discovery,
moving forward, travel and planning.
And reverse is a little more of this like hesitation or fear,
some disorganization, some lack of planning.
So Calendula's right, helping usout here again, the mom friend
(36:08):
saying like, hey, OK, you know, maybe you're going on vacation
soon or you're moving or you're getting a new career.
Like what's the plan? Like have you thought through
everything right? Have you, have you gathered all
your boxes together for moving? Like, have you thought
everything through? Like, I just want to make sure
you're going to be OK. That's kind of the vibe I get
(36:28):
from this card. So Calendal is out here looking
out for us, making sure we're we're getting sleep, we're
taking care of ourselves and that we're planning ahead,
right? Can be really fun to get excited
about new things. And then sometimes we let that
excitement take over and we don't actually get into the
reality of what it's going to look like to make all of it
happen, right? Like a new career can be really
(36:50):
exciting, or travel can be really exciting and requires
planning, right? OK, I'm going to leave my
flights at this time. OK, I got to leave the house,
right? I got to be at the airport at
this time. I got to leave the house at this
time. OK, I got a pack and what am I
packing? Do I need to do laundry before I
pack? So you're working backwards in
hours, right? I'm definitely feeling that this
week. I'm going to be going on
(37:10):
vacation towards the end of thisweek.
So I'm recording some episodes ahead of time and I'm already
like, Oh yeah, let me get the laundry started so I can get the
packing started so we could packthe car so we can get ready the
night before. So I'm definitely feeling that.
So thank you, Colangela for reminding me and reminding us.
(37:31):
And if you'd like to join me on the journey of using the Tarot
for transformation, you can click on the link in the show
notes to indicate your interest in receiving more info.
We'll be working together for 12weeks of calls and journaling to
discover what happens when we want to transform our lives
through the Tarot. And like I said, I'm thinking of
starting this at the end of August, so no worries.
(37:53):
You still have some time to signup to get more information, to
hop on a call with me if you want to learn more before you
sign up, anything like that. So links for the tarot decks I
talk about will always be in theshow notes and on my website if
you'd like to look at them or purchase them.
And thanks for joining me today on Everyday Tarot.
Just as a reminder, the podcast comes out daily, Monday through
Friday for all of 2025. You can e-mail me
(38:16):
me@camilleasaunders.com with your thoughts, questions, and
more. All right, I'll see you soon.
Bye bye.
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