The Cosmos Living Archetype

[Plant Archetypes] Its healing aliveness can help you bring forth your message

The whole plant allows the air to flow through it, its magenta flowers well supported by thin stems. The flowers move with the breeze, radiating aliveness. The foliage is thin, airy, elegant and open.

Through mid Springtime, soon to come, into early Autumn, as a garden plant Cosmos grows with openness towards the sun. It stays vibrant and alive while connected to its roots, but will barely survive a day if cut and placed in a vase.

Cosmos is airy and rooted, it enjoys being visited by the bees and it thrives in full sun.

Quoting Richard Katz and Patricia Kaminski, who have researched it’s flower essence:

Cosmos is a plant of the light and air. As a member of the Sunflower family it is exalted in the sun, and has the harmonious composite structure that gives it its genus and common name. But unlike the Sunflower plant, with its massive leaves, Cosmos leaves are airy, feathery, with long sinewy stems, which allow the plant to sensitively move with the wind.

Continuing to quote Richard Katz and Patricia Kaminski from their Flower Essence Society page and website, where you will find an abundance of information and cases:

It does share the Sunflower’s solar orientation, with the flowers pointed upwards to the sun and the “cosmos.” Like other composite flowers, Cosmos is about integration of consciousness, allowing the many parts to speak as one whole.

The color of the Cosmos blossom is also significant, as the magenta colors indicate a vibrant presence of life force. Cosmos engenders enlivened thinking, an antidote to dry, abstract academic intellectualism or facile superficiality that characterizes much of contemporary thought.

When sharing its essence qualities with clients, I sometimes describe the healing offered by Cosmos as helping us be receptive (notice the gentle chalice form) to allow higher concepts to be “downloaded”, taking a vivid and coherent form in our minds.

And from that fluent aliveness of thinking, we are able to convert these thoughts into clear speech, written or spoken.

And when it is our turn to speak, we speak out with aliveness!

Cosmos as a flower essence:

Key patterns of imbalance/indications: Unfocused, disorganized communication; overexcited speech, overwhelmed by too many ideas

Positive qualities: Integration of ideas and speech; coherent thinking; mercurial expression

I hope my photos help convey its vibrant healing qualities. When taking its essence, come back to look at these images. And if you can, do plant Cosmos in your garden to enjoy the real plant, and all other plants. The plants are calling us!

We are all messengers, our contribution is needed. Our voice is called for at this time.