Eyebright

Euphrasia takes her name from Euphrosyne, one of the three Graces of the Greeks — the grace of gladness. Her small white flower is painted with a golden eye and violet lashes, and by the old Doctrine of Signatures, which read a plant's purpose in its form, the herbalists of the Renaissance set her down as the herb of the eyes and called her Eyebright; Culpeper and the medieval herbals kept her under that name for centuries. She has been used all that while to relieve tired and strained eyes, to soothe their irritation and dryness, and to keep the sight fresh and clear — and, in the spiritual reading, to clear the inner sight as well: Milton has the archangel Michael purge Adam's vision with euphrasy and rue in Paradise Lost. Hermetically she belongs to the Sun: her signature is illumination — the light that parts illusion, the clear glance, the insight that arrives like morning. Enriched with the plant's own alchemical mineral salt, sealed in glass for the collector's shelf.