Description

The name Melissa of Greek origin translates to “honeybee”, but Melissa was also a nymph and mystagogue who was known to have been the first keeper of the sacred bees and the first to discover the powerful uses of their honey; known as the Food of the Gods.

She is said to have nursed baby Zeus with honey, and that there were bees leaving her body at death, essentially transforming into them. From the nymph Melissa, blossomed the Melissae, the “Bee Priestesses”, who like the bees themselves, are in service to the health of the greater whole through the spreading of knowledge and prophecy.

Being such liminal beings, moving from the darkness of the hive where so much unseen magick takes place, to flying out in the world pollinating their plant allies in a continuous dance of transference, Bees have always been known across cultures and timelines as the psychopomps, but even more so as sacred messengers between the light and the dark, the above and the underworld. The Gemini twins in this piece represent this connection between the light and dark elements of the Self, coming together to form a greater wholeness of being through the power of dual perceptions uniting.

Much like the sign of Gemini, bees and the Melissae gather information and move it both for the purpose of pollination and to intentionally work with the intelligence of the earth through the holy work of recombination. No honey is the same and no beehive is the same. All are gathering information from different sources and recombining it to create something divinely and artfully new.

This visual talisman is intended to invoke the original bee priestess Melissa and the spirit of Gemini, promoting pollination and the spreading of sacred intelligence and information to achieve collective health and wholeness.