10/19/2025
Making Juniper Berry Oil with berries from the confusingly named “Eastern Red Cedar” (aka Juniperus virginiana). For the past 4 years I’ve made the oil with berries gathered myself, rather than purchased. I really love how deeply fragrant and gently green-blue the oil becomes when made with the freshly harvested berries! Primarily, I make oil with the berries and use it in salves, specifically, “Muscle & Joint Salve”. Juniper moves water in the body, reducing swelling and encouraging urine. In this way, miskwaawaak (Ojibwe word for this species of Juniper meaning red wood) is used in the treatment of sprains, strains & soft tissue injury, arthritis, in complications of the urinary tract and as an antiseptic. It is both healing and pain relieving. Because of their affinity with water in the body- and then also cooling heat & inflammation- I like to gather the berries from trees close to water whenever possible. I also use the berries as seasoning in cooking sometimes.
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“The old wife of sickness, Kivutar, was carrying a fiery bugle-horn in the middle of the Hill of Pain, on the summit of Mount Suffering; one spark dropt off, the red fire fell on the summit of Mount Suffering and became inflammatory burns, turned into sickness for men.
“The girl of Tuoni, Maid of Pain, herself in pain was weeping tears, was lamenting in her suffering, as she bustled about with her knees in hot ashes, her arms in the fire, collecting the pains with stone gloves on her hands. She boils the pains and sickness in a wee kettle, an iron baking pan, at the end of an iron bench, that no one should receive a pang, that no one should receive a hurt.”
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