Sunflower and the darkness within

If you think about a sunflower, usually its associated with big, yellow flowers. The flower looks like a sun itself, so its hermetic signature is attributed to the Sun. It nourishes humans and animals, wealth and abundance from mother earth. My sunflowers grew up huge this year, to the size of 3m, so its also a signature of Jupiter, the planet of wealth, and oversize.

So far, so obvious! But today I looked into the direction of my plant preparations in alcohol, and I noticed something with really dark color. Oh, that’s something poisonous, Belladonna maybe?
Not at all, the sunflower tincture turned into darkness after a month. This needs to be added to the Spagyric understanding of the whole plant: Full golden power to the outside, darkness in the middle.

On Samhain Eve I took this picture of the same flower as above – revealing its dark side. And I swear, its not edited in any way!

There is another plant known for dealing with Sun and darkness: Hypericum perforatum (St. John’s wort, Johanniskraut). It’s used against depression, it can bring back the light within inner darkness and cheer up the mood tremendously. Sunflower is completely different, but how? I think the Jupiter signature is helpfull here: Its about accepting the darkness, that is associated with wealth. Lot’s of people suffer from Burnout, from financial problems, and the damage the capitalism is doing to the world. You can’t deny that, but you can turn it for yourself back into the nourishing and productive direction, turning back into the sun.