Symbols as a Divine Language

Symbolism surrounds us in our everyday when we take notice. I like to refer to this as :

the art of observation

In my very first post I talked about the symbolism of the moon and how, if we were all more attuned to the symbolism around us — what I consider a language of God — we might not live in this chaotic, confusing, time-and-resource-harvesting world.

I believe experiencing the world through a lens of divine observation would naturally lead us toward harmony and clarity, toward regenerative practices as the norm, just like the natural cycles that ebb and flow: darkness to light, contraction to expansion, and back again.

I don't mean a world without chaos or violence, some utopian vision that ignores our complexity as human beings — or the tides, quakes, and eruptions the earth herself goes through. What I dream of is simpler than that.

It's a world where:

-People can respond to divine guidance from within.

What would it look like to move through your day without doubting every decision? To know when rest is necessary, when a task is essential or not, how to meet conflict, when to say yes and when to say no — without needing an outer authority to tell you, because you can hear the divine within yourself?

-People can read the symbols that already surround them.

What if everyone carried an awareness of the symbolic connections that so often go overlooked?

Lunar cycles : oceans and tides : menstruation

Masculine : feminine — sun : moon — fire & air : earth & water

Winter : death — spring : rebirth — fall : harvest — summer : bloom

Light : illumination — shadow : hidden

-People could see the divine thread that weaves it all together.

What if you knew that patterns repeat themselves throughout nature, including within you — and believed those patterns were a symbolic language, reminding you of your interconnection with everything else?

The branches in your arteries and veins : waterways : root systems : tree branches

Waves in the ocean : waves of your heartbeat : waves of sand dunes : clouds

Neural networks : mycelium : leaf venation : river deltas : the internet

I know this would be life-changing, world-altering — because this kind of observation has already changed my own life and the world as I know it. It's shaped the meaning I find in the mundane, and my ability to make decisions and discern truth.

I'm not here to convert anyone. I only hope to expand the lens of another, the way so many others have expanded mine. Every interaction reshapes our inner sense of the world, whether we notice it happening or not — learning to tie a knot, a funny story born from an odd interaction, witnessing road rage, reading a book. Anything can widen your awareness. One minute you didn't hold a piece of knowledge or experience; the next, you do. I picture it like an architectural floor plan inside my mind, endlessly under construction — a new floor added here, a staircase there, a bridge connecting two rooms that never used to touch.

This happens to me all the time, but I will share one specific example of a few years ago when a small piece of knowledge rearranged an entire floor of my understanding: herbal energetics.

I homeschool my children, and I try to model the belief that we can learn more about anything, at any time, if we're willing to keep looking. Herbs are one of the things I keep looking at — I've leaned on them for my own health for the last twenty years, and I'm still learning. But herbal energetics didn't just add a new fact to that pile. It was proof on a small scale of the exact thing I'm trying to describe: that the patterns I already believed connected everything — hot and cold, contraction and expansion, moisture and dryness — were legible in a system I'd been using for two decades without ever truly seeing.

Here's what I mean. Herbal energetics is a system herbalists use to categorize plants by their qualities and effects on the body, rather than only by their chemical makeup. It's a foundational idea in traditional and Western folk herbalism, echoing older medical systems — Traditional Chinese Medicine, Ayurveda, Greek humoral medicine — that each developed their own version of the same observation. The core qualities look like this:

Hot / Cold — Does the herb create warmth (cayenne, ginger — both increase circulation and generate heat) or cooling (peppermint, aloe — both soothe inflammation and heat)?

Damp / Dry — Does it add moisture (a demulcent like marshmallow root, which soothes and moistens irritated tissue) or dry things out (an astringent like yarrow or witch hazel, which tightens tissue and reduces secretions)?

Tense / Relaxed — Does it stimulate and constrict, or relax and release? Think of a relaxing nervine like chamomile against a stimulant like coffee.

My brain felt like it had a small explosion the first time I encountered this. It seems, in hindsight, like such an obvious observation to make about herbs — especially when you're using them to support real symptoms. I already knew peppermint and ginger both eased an upset stomach. But learning that one is cooling and one is warming didn't just add information; it revealed a pattern I'd been standing inside for twenty years without naming. The scaffolding was already there. I just hadn't seen the floor.

That's the art of observation, in practice. Not a mystical leap, but a willingness to notice that the same handful of patterns — heat and cold, wet and dry, tension and release — show up everywhere, from the way a plant acts on your body to the way the moon pulls the tide. Once you've seen a pattern clearly in one place, in something as ordinary as an herb, it gets a little harder to miss it everywhere else.

I've put together a cheat sheet of some herbs and their energetics, which I'll share below. I encourage you to continue this exploration if you have any interest in herbs. And if you like learning more, or teaching your own children about herbs, keep an eye out — I have an Herbalism Unit Study coming soon.

Tonight is a new moon. To the unobservant, it's simply a dark sphere in the sky. To the one who practices the art of observation, it marks the darkness from which all life begins — in the womb, in the soil — the start of a new cycle, the time when many women bleed or ovulate. It's in Leo tonight too, ruled by the sun, carrying qualities of boldness, brilliance, courage, initiative. Layer that meaning in however it speaks to you. It's also a lunar eclipse — usually a quiet, sudden lights-out moment, but with the moon already dark, I read it instead as an invitation: a call to notice where we've been hiding our own radiance, and how we might lead it, boldly, back into the open.

I don't expect everyone to hold the same reverence I do for what I consider divine symbolism — a language written into the world for us to read. But I do dream of a world where more people pause long enough to notice it. Herbal energetics was just the latest floor added to that house. I look forward to what is next and sharing with you.