In Spiritual PhytoEssencing, the practitioner is taught how to identify the archetypal pattern that characterizes a particular individual’s soul dynamics. Various components of this pattern are then proficiently matched with corresponding essential oils. The resultant customized blend constitutes a plant soul analogue of a given individual’s soul-picture or some key aspect of that picture (e.g., his or her astrological archetypal nature).
It is this customized correspondence that encourages the individual’s soul to accept it as a reorganizing nucleus. In other words, the custom blend is the matching key that can unlock the moribund potential within the soul.
In Spiritual PhytoEssencing, the term archetype refers to a unique intangible construct attached to the soul that generates a pattern of characteristic potentials. Accordingly, particular identifiable patterns of emotional symptoms and physical predispositions are viewed as tangible expressions of underlying core archetypes. In turn, these outward symptoms, predispositions and reactional modes are considered to be archetypal images.
In Jungian psychology, archetypes are considered to be inherited patterns of thought or symbolic imagery, present in the individual unconscious, which derive from the infinite inventory of past experiences stored within the collective unconscious. While Jung’s concept of the collective unconscious is undoubtedly a rich source of the formative archetypes of the soul, Spiritual PhytoEssencing also places a great deal of emphasis on genetics, childhood constitutional remodeling (generally directed by the conditions of worth set by the parents and the character of the emotional milieu that the child grows up in) and past lives as primary sources of influential archetypes.
Accordingly, an individual’s unique set of core archetypes bond with that person’s eternal “I”. The eternal “I” can be viewed as being the nucleus of this “atom” and the archetypes the orbiting electrons.

Each individual’s unique pattern of physical and emotional imbalance is a “snapshot” of not only his or her archetypal structure but also the “idea” of the disharmony or disease whichemanates from a person’s soul level and inhibits the full bonding of the spirit with the emotional and physical bodies.
The focus of my Spiritual PhytoEssencing work is to identify, via the archetypal images, the blueprint of the underlying archetypal structure and then match essential oils to those aspects of that construct that have been most prominently impacted by the ongoing incongruity between that person’s inner nature and outer identity.
Subsequently, a combination of relevant essential oils is formulated to act as a mirror-image of this “central disturbance” and serve as a customized response to the bioenergetic fingerprint of a deeply ingrained pattern of imbalance. This essential oil combination is administered both in its physical form and orally in a derived homeopathic dilution (the oil blend serves as the germinal “mother essence”).
As with human beings, the outward qualities of each oil are expression of underlying archetypes that are bonded to the plant soul it embodies. The key to accurate oil selection for a blend is to be able to identify the underlying archetypal pattern for each of the oils and then match that oil to some aspect of the archetypal pattern of the person for whom the customized blend is being prepared. Thus, in a “paint by numbers” type of procedure the blender creates a “portrait in oils” that closely mirrors the archetypal nature of that person.
The more accurately rendered this portrait is, the more potential there is for that person’s eternal “I”/real self aspect of consciousness to recognize its true image. Sparked by that recognition, this inner core consciousness will reassert its inherent hierarchical superiority and initiate the process of reigning in a wayward outer identity in order to overcome incongruity and psychospiritual stuckness. Thus, it is this glimpse of the Self’s true nature, reflected in the mirror of the customized essential oil blend, that initiates a shift in consciousness back to the “beginning of oneself.”
“Through its behavior, man’s body reflects its deep forms (i.e., its totality of spiritual strengths). The body, as it were, translates the spiritual dimension into a language that can be understood by others. Thus, the body is the form’s vehicle of expression…Light and vessel are synonyms for form and substance, respectively. The vessel reveals and expresses the character of the light through its actions…The light is internal. The vessel is external. The light is the essence which clothes itself in and directs the action of the vessel. Through the action the light is revealed; the inner self is shown.”
– Rabbi Yechiel Bar-Lev (Song of the Soul)