 Hello, beautiful souls. Welcome back to Art of Awakening. My name is Ona Christie, a visionary artist in Mystic Oracle and this video is going to be all about bee medicine and specifically bee stings and bee venom. So today I was just going for a walk with a friend this morning, walking down a country road and all of a sudden I felt this incredible searing pain right about there. Bee had just flown into me or I walked into it or something and it didn't like it so I got a bee sting and they're wiping away the tears, got home, put some you know baking soda on it and decided well I wanted to find out what that what it might mean spiritually to be stung by a bee. So I did some looking into it and so I'm going to be sharing some of just a little bit of scientific information to help give a background so we can understand the spiritual meaning a little better. I'm going to share some spiritual meanings of bee sting and bee venom as well as some practical things you can do spiritually if you've suffered from a bee sting. So let's start with the science. Bee venom therapy has been used for thousands of years as a natural treatment for a variety of conditions including arthritis and other inflammatory autoimmune illness, skin conditions, allergies, neurological diseases and chronic pain. And bee venoms contain a number of proteins. The compounds can be both inflammatory and anti-inflammatory so they can be both difficult on the body, kind of attacking the body and also to helping it to heal. And some of these compounds have been shown to have anti-viral, antibacterial and anti-cancer effects in some studies. Once you're stung your body will start to produce antibodies to the different proteins in the venom which ultimately helps to strengthen your immune system. In other words the venom in a bee sting stimulates the body to heal itself. But there are about like 1 in 500 people will have an overly sensitive immune system to bee venom and that can result in life-threatening reactions. So it's really important to know if you're one of those people. A couple more things about bee stings only the female bee sting. Okay so the stinger is thought to have developed from the ovipositor or the little organ that the female uses to lay eggs. Most likely if you get stung it's going to be a worker bee and she doesn't lay eggs but she still got that stinger that developed out of that organ. So esoterically we're working with feminine protective energy here and it is designed primarily for defensive use. So three things stood out to me when I was researching this and one is that the bee doesn't have to put a lot of force behind the sting. The power of the sting lies in the venom itself and the barbs which act to pull the sting deeper into the flesh of the victim. Okay it's protective feminine energy often has to do with our words right and we'll get a little bit more into that later but just realizing that sometimes when we speak it can have a stinging effect or somebody else's without actually needing to right that doesn't have to be a lot of force behind it. There doesn't even often have to be intention to harm but sometimes words can end up triggering old trauma or old wounds. Okay number two is that the bee actually dies after a sting and then number three even after the bee flies or drops away the stinger can continue to pump venom into the skin right which is sometimes when we have old traumas even though the cause of the wound has long gone we can still be suffering from it and it can still keep coming up and coming up and coming up. Okay so when I asked my higher guidance what's the meaning of bee sting they gave me the following message a bee sting takes you out of yourself the sudden unexpected pain creates a sharp awakening a heightened awareness it brings all your attention back to self at one's most vulnerable it is a portal to the primal wound. Okay so powerful stuff right we're dealing with very deep seeded trauma deep seeded wounding and when these things come up it can both trigger this wound to keep coming up and in its negative aspect it will just keep coming up and keep coming up and be the cycle but as positive as positive aspect it is an incredible opportunity for healing because you cannot heal old injuries or old wounds without bringing them up first so I feel like one of the most important spiritual meanings or spiritual functions of a bee sting is to bring up these old wounds so that they can be seen acknowledged and healed. Okay so I asked again the guidance why is this important what's the spiritual purpose they said at the moment of the sting we experience the wounding the pain is so sharp and so sudden that for a moment nothing else exists we are one with it okay so it's an opportunity to re-experience through the bee sting the pain of the trauma okay and it symbolizes the state when we feel that when we're just really in that that initial shock of having been stung it symbolizes the state of identification with our own pain body and we all do this right we've experienced trauma this lifetime other lifetimes childhood whatever it is and we start to identify with that pain and we can become so enmeshed in the unresolved pain that it creates a false self or false selves right so we don't even know who we are okay so the natural thing to do when we get stung is to continue to identify with the pain right so you can get hysteric screamer heads off flat the arms right and unfortunately we have that kind of knee jerk reaction it can not only make the pain feel worse but it can actually have serious consequences if you're sensitive to bee stings you can't keep your head and figure out you know what you actually need to do to to treat it also if there's any other bees around in the area it can upset them and invite further stings right so what we really want to do is avoid having that knee jerk emotional built-in automatic reaction of just losing it okay so the alternative to that is that the bee sting invites you to become the observer and to step into observing mode okay so to heal from the sting one must distance oneself from it calm oneself down step aside from the pain and think logically how to treat it okay and just think about being your own parent right if you're a little kid and you have a bee sting then of course you're probably going to be going crazy and screaming and crying and the parent is the one who has to maintain this steady calm presence to help to soothe and calm the child and at the same time think it through okay am i sensitive to bee stings is this a life-threatening situation is the stinger still on the skin how far am i from access to to treatment and what do i have available to treat it with so just sort of triage questions here right so bee sting can bring up just like the whole concept of triage figuring things out right in the moment and so there's there's a lot of power in being able to do that and that may be something that we need to do at various points in our lives around various topics is like okay well this is when something triggers us and finally we realize that okay something's come to a head and there's a deep-seated reason behind this time to do some triage all right so i will share in just a little bit another message that bee gave to me directly when i asked bee about this but first i was guided to check out this deck that i've been working on it's called the bee sister hood oracle um and i have been involved in this for several years but it wasn't until last year where we opened up the project to a whole beautiful group of women and this deck is the result this is a prototype of it and you can see it's 48 cards they all have to do with bees and beekeeping bee medicine and it's it's just a fantastic deck you can follow the bee sister hood oracle by signing up for their newsletter at bee sisterhoodoracle.com and you'll be notified when the deck will be available in their upcoming kickstarter in the meantime you'll get lots of sneak peeks at the art and lots of bee medicine lore okay so i knew that the bee oracle deck has a venom card and this is it it's gorgeous and i i want to say that when i was the only only artist on the project i was trying to feel into doing a card around venom and i just found it to be this incredibly intense almost like i don't even know where to start with this so i really want to commend the artist here her name is jeannie williams of doing a fantastic absolutely fantastic job with venom i feel like she really really got the feeling for it and i wanted to share with you some of her words about this card and bee venom in particular in the spiritual meaning of bee venom and this is in her own words i wanted to convey how venom seeps through the flesh burning the victim while setting the bee and her hive free my starting point was the pain i attempted to show how venom penetrates the skin and spreads into the body at the same time the bee would fly away free free of the burdens of life but also with an ease of heart knowing she did everything she could to protect the hive i saw using venom not as an irrational or impulsive choice but as clear and sure knowing that this is what must be be done to protect all that is held dear it's a shift from the panic of a threatening and chaotic situation into the single-minded and clear decision to give everything that remains in order to ensure the future it's an extreme and a necessary action okay so i'm going to delve a little bit more to some of the points she makes in a bit if you like her artwork and want to learn more about her you can find a lot of her artwork on instagram at otter fern genie also offers facilitation and coaching services i will leave those links below okay so a couple of things that genie alluded to when she spoke about this venom card one is boundaries right as she points out bees sting in order to protect the hive so the spiritual meaning of bee sting will always have something to do with boundaries in some way okay so ask yourself are you maintaining strong boundaries are you respecting the boundaries of other people or are you nosing your way in where you really have no business maybe they're nosing their way into you okay um so just being aware of boundaries and again that comes down to truth if you don't know the truth of who you are if you don't recognize well what i'm you know am i identifying with my pain body or with my higher self that that will always lead to some kind of a struggle around boundaries right so it's a part of boundary work is is discovering the real you right figuring out you know who am i really and and what is it that's mine that i need to protect and how to make appropriate boundaries okay another aspect of bee venom has to do with sacrifice right remember the bee dies after she stinks okay to find truth in order to defend your boundaries there's always going to be sacrifice okay you must be willing to do the hard work of determining what's truly you and what's your pain body speaking is sticking to the truth may mean that you have to give up something that's dearly attached to you okay or and or you could be dealing with other people's attachments to you or to other things that are resulting in misaligned behavior okay some of these things can include material belongings being attached to those um belief systems habits jobs friendships just about anything can come up right um it could mean doing things that are painful for the higher good right that sacrifice um it can actually make you unpopular right to to stick to that truth and to defend your truth uh may even end relationships or put a lot of stress on them um which isn't always bad sometimes it's that stress that helps a relationship to heal right so again coming back to words and speaking up which i'll address again in a little bit um so it's in short it's imperative that you know what it is that you're actually defending or what you're actually sacrificing for if what you're defending is actually your own pain body rather than your truth it will end up doing more harm than good like when someone with B venom allergy gets stung on the other hand when you really are aligned and defending your truth then it's going to ultimately lead to greater healing even if there's some aspect of yourself or even your life that has to be sacrificed right in order to do that defensive action okay so coming back to the power of words i went in and asked B spirit directly what the message was today for me and even though this is a personal message i'm going to share a part of it here in the hope that perhaps there's somebody that it will really speak to and also because i feel like it does connect very deeply with the general meaning of B sting okay um so here's the message from B words sting your words your voice are powerful and have powerful effect use them wisely your words are your life force they are as potent as a weapon sharp as a tool you must learn to use your words with precision coach them in silence do not be too quick to speak a few powerful words spoken consciously will have greater effect than a waterfall of words and certainly more beneficial effect than words spoken indiscriminately your words can sting or bring soothing sweetness to a wound your wisdom task is to discern when and where is appropriate for each okay so let's look at some practical encouragement if you've suffered a beast thing what can you do spiritually okay um um just to wrap everything up a beasting is an invitation to very quickly ground yourself assess the situation find the wound and take steps to heal it okay so spiritually one way to do this is once you've got the physical sting under control to find a quiet place and connect with your inner guidance right um and first of all you might need to connect with and acknowledge right whatever emotional sting may have come up okay um that's really important acknowledge it then hand it over to your higher guidance and ask for their assistance okay and so you can do this working with oracle cards do some journaling go into meditation whatever a method works best for you but ask the bee what is your message for me at this time okay or ask what wound is coming up to be healed what's my next step to heal it okay um and then keep in mind that a beasting is something that requires immediate attention okay so once you receive your answers and feel in your gut that those answers are aligned don't put off taking action on them okay um keep in mind also that what triggers a beasting spiritually is often something acute something in the moment and sometimes it's just that it's just something that needs to be dealt with and and you can deal with it and be done with it okay but many times it's a quick painful incident that brings one's attention to much deeper patterns of misalignment in other words it can be a signal that deep wounds are coming up for healing so even though there's immediate work to do it's important to realize that healing deep emotional wounds can take a lot of time so be gentle with yourself give yourself the time you need to heal and remember you were born to be free