Olive indication

Those who have suffered much mentally or physically and are so exhausted and weary that they feel that they have no more strength to make any effort. Daily life is hard work for them, without pleasure.
[Bach: Twelve Healers and Other Remedies 1936]

Olive details

Latin Name: Olea europaea
Group: Seven Helpers
Emotional Group: Insufficient interest in present circumstances
Chronic condition: Exhaustion
Method:Sun

Affirmation

We each have a Divine mission in this world, and so our souls use our minds and bodies as instruments to do this work, so that when all three are working in unison the result is perfect health and perfect happiness. [Bach]

Chronic Conditions

For those who are pale, worn-out and exhausted, perhaps after much worry, illness, grief, or some long struggle. In every way they are very tired and feel as if they had no more strength to fight on, and at times hardly know how to keep going. They may depend very much upon others for help. In some, the skin is very dry and may be wrinkled. [Bach]

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Olive - Form and Function

In the Mediterranean, wild vines grow in the cooler shade of any small valley or seasonal water-course but olives grow on the open hillside. Here they are exposed to the full force of the sun. It is this burning dryness that the olive trees can withstand, indeed they love the intensity of the light and crave the warm of the sun. To obtain moisture in a dry land the olive tree has an enormous and wide-spreading root structure that can extend far beyond the canopy of the tree: the reason that they are set well apart within a grove. Wide spacing also allows the maximum light to reach all parts of the tree. The leaf is narrow, a slender ovate form, dark above and pale grey beneath: the dark absorbs light and heat whilst the white-grey reflects. The two-tones allow for the regulation of absorbed light as the curved stalk rotates the leaf to moderate the effects of temperature so that in high summer some of the leaves move to face into the stem. This gives a shimmering effect of light and dark. As the leaves alternately absorb and reflect light there is a dynamo effect of building energy within the tree. Stand or sit beneath an olive tree on a hot summer day and you will feel the refreshing coolness of the shade but you may also enjoy the benefits of the stored energy that pulses with vitality within the tree.

Olive trees have provided useful products for mankind since the beginning of recorded history: as food, as oil for cooking, preserving, for lights, as cosmetics, medicine and as useful wood in building and ornamentation. All this has given them a central place within society. Consequently there are strong traditions that surround the olive and its cultivation…. Job may have had the olive in mind when he lamented the short life for ‘man that is born of woman’ and compared it to a tree:
For there is hope for a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that its shoots will not cease. Though its roots grow old in the earth and its stump die in the ground, yet at the scent of water it will bud and put forth branches like a young plant.
There is also the reference in Psalm 128 which calls for a blessing from the Lord:

Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots around your table.

Both quotations allude to the capacity of the olive for regeneration, sending up young shoots (children) from the table of the cut stump. The olive tree links the experiences of exhaustion, life, apparent death and regeneration.

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