My Story

There are many stories of course, but I call this one ‘my story’ to catch your attention. Yes – I need your attention to be able to communicate my messages, and yes – I am afraid of being viewed as an attention seeker therefore, as well as being judged for it. I care what others think of me, because I am still afraid.

I am afraid. That will be the strand running through this story. I am mostly afraid of being falsely accused of something, when I am in fact innocent, and that nobody will believe me.

This particular story takes as its point of departure my work with essential oils. I think I ordered my first batch of essential oils about four years ago. I hardly knew anything about them, but a voice inside said I should order them. I was sick during this time, exhausted and feeling lost after a divorce the year before, and struggling with my commitments as a mother of two young children. My daughters loved the oils, they used to fight over who would get to choose the oil for the day to diffuse in our flat. I would also use lavender oil on all three of us at night to calm down before going to sleep, which was a good routine for our neurodivergent family with hyperactive brains and sensitive nervous systems.

A few years later I came in touch with a woman, Maria, who was working with essential oils and through her I was introduced to a larger group of women whose calling I shared. It was no other calling than the calling to know God, but in a ‘feminine’ way that had previously been unknown to me. I decided to partake in a two-year long priestess training, which I am about to finish within a few weeks from now. During these two years I have gone through a number of initiations, passages from one stage to the next, where I’ve had to face fears to reach a more expanded place on the other side.

You might wonder what my fears have to do with essential oils, what is the ‘red thread’ (Swedish expression meaning core idea or theme) here? Essential oils are pleasant, have a lovely scent, and the pursuit of working with them seems harmless and kind of sweet, no? Perhaps this is true for many people, but for me it brings up deep seated fears of persecution. I’ve worked very closely with the 1600s witch hunts for a number of years and through this work it’s become very clear to me how this collective trauma still hasn’t been cleared, and I suppose some of us are more attuned to it than others. Claiming to possess any ‘earth based wisdom’, for lack of a better generic word, might not get you killed nowadays, but it may very well lead to the accusation of quackery, heresy or ridicule.

I have been afraid to publicly announce that I work with essential oils precisely because of those fears, and oftentimes when we summon the courage to face such fears, what we are scared of will take place. This happened to me a few weeks before Christmas last year when I announced on Facebook that I would take part in a workshop with essential oils, to make Christmas gifts. (This was also a time when the Covid and vaccine public debates polarized us into “good” and “bad” citizens in a very toxic way.) A male relative saw that I was going to attend this workshop and attacked – verbally and virtually – my friend and indirectly me in a disrespectful, shocking and totally inappropriate way. He later apologized and is forgiven, and I know many of us carry (internalized) contempt for ‘the feminine’ (I do too), so me telling this is not at all to make him look bad – he is on the contrary a lovely person – but to make the case that these fears that I am talking about still have a meaning to this day.

I am going to co-host an essential oils-infused workshop later this week and this is the first time I publicly announce that I do this sort of work, on a larger scale at least, and yet again it brings up fears in my system. I am scared of being judged or publicly ridiculed for what I do, even though I know I am called to do it. I am especially called by the Rose and her medicine, and I can trace this calling back to my early childhood. In February this year, I woke up in the middle of the night and I could feel an intense smell of rose in my nose although there wasn’t any around. In both Islam and Christianity, smelling the scent of roses when there are none nearby is said to signify the presence of the divine. The same day I received the message that I should call my healing treatments ‘Rose healing’ instead of reiki (which is only a part of what I do).

I don’t want to remain scared of the work that I am called to do. I am Ellinor Cajsen Maria, three names with the meanings ‘God’s Light ~ Pure ~ Beloved’ (Maria is also said to signify a title of a priestess).

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