By H.H. Dr. Cleeretta Henderson Smiley

Every person, place, condition and thing has a vibrational essence. In Feng Shui everything is seen or considered as a "Chi" qualifier, whether harmonious or disharmonious. Today I shall confine my message to Star Essence Flower and Gemstone Essences considered as powerful enhancers of individuals and spaces.

In the Eagle News 6/21/2000 I wrote an article on New Medicine for a New Humanity. It has been said plants will become the medicinals, healers and teachers of tomorrow. We at Smiley's Holistic Feng Shui Institute have started viewing Feng Shui and Healing in a different light and in a new way as it pertains to healing of self and environment for goal attainment. Through research and search for the best curatives to yield the greatest return, we now realize the Star Essences- made and marketed by a pure natural nature Healing Channel, Star Riparetti of Santa Barbara, CA., and Roger Valencia of Peru- are powerfully supreme for the healing of self and the environment. The Star Essences are used internally and externally by individuals and sprayed in spaces, put in water for laundering of clothes, sprayed on plants, used for clearing crystals, or in any capacity that you use water. The difference here is the potency of the Andean Orchids and other plants used as curatives.

Star Essence has produced over [250] different channeled products that will assist one to get beyond any stuck area of life. For example, the Peruvian Flower Essence Collection consists of: About Face, I Am Generosity, I Am Gratitude, Integration, Purification, Master Teacher, Mango Paradise (Celebration of Life in the Physical Form), Strength and Chi, etc. The Ancient Lemuria Santa Barbara Flower Essence Collection offers Be Nurtured, Creation/Focus, Dance, Deep Breath, Early Bloomer, Emancipation, For Giving, Full Moonlight, God/Goddess Unity, Graceful Shift, Inner Guru, I Remember, Let Go and Trust, Light Navigator, Magic Healer, Pure Joy, Male Strength and Sweet New Beginnings, among others. Examples of the Gemstone Essence Collection are Green Tourmaline (very male), Lavender (borderless), Moonstone (Emotional Balance), Spinel (Good Luck), Tanzanite (Brain Vision of Love), Yellow Cat's Eye (Angelic Connection), and Yellow Tourmaline (Illuminating, Stimulating and Inspiring).

Mention has been made of 33 of the Essences available Channeled direct. There are many more to assist and facilitate any facet of life on any of the 100 or more senses a person might want to master for more harmonious living. As a Holistic Health Practitioner doubly Board Certified as a Health Care Expert I have been using the products of which I speak and have found them to clear out any memory from any facet of my being and environment when used as suggested and the way they are suggested. Health Care in the New Millennium is wearing a different Constitutional Make-up than in the last century. All curatives must be used in a balanced integrative way where they can find their center and be in one accord with the rest of the Chi in a space or a place.

We have learned how to integrate the face/body/space guas to validate the findings of blocked chi in the body and know what is the corresponding area in the home and what level of the home to check out and what gua on the level to balance holistically. This is the power of a search and a solution found in part in Star Essences and all of the other curatives used to restore health in the body and in the space to accomplish any objective or goal we desire. Through faith and intent goals can be accomplished as we expect as a result of right application and right placement of environmental curatives in spaces and on and in the body.

The Angel Rejuvenation Spray and Crystal Clear Spray are good for Sacred Space Clearing, before reading the house. They both are in a base of distilled activated healing water. The Crystal Clear Spray leaves the aura of the person and the home lifted to a higher vibration, unleashes clarity, smiles and angelic presences. The Angel Rejuvenation Spray makes the Angels more apparent in the environment. It is always good to spray the hands. It is always good to spray the hands after spraying the individuals and rooms.

As I said before there are some [200] other Star Essences to be investigated for body and space usage as Primary Medicinals to balance the Chi and create a harmonious flow of Heaven on Earth. What a safe way to remain healthy without negative side effects!

By Rhonda Parks Manville
Santa Barbara News Press Staff Writer

During her 14-year career in nuclear medicine, Star Riparetti worked with the unseen vibrations of radioactive isotopes. Now she works with the invisible energy of flowers.

The Santa Barbaran is the maker of Star Flower Essences, liquid infusions of flowers collected from plants in Santa Barbara and sacred sites near Machu Picchu, Peru. Bottled in blue glass and dispensed with eye droppers for placement under the tongue, the flower essences are said by those who use them to have beneficial powers that come from the plant's field of energy.

"There are some things you can't see, or feel or taste, but they are very powerful," said Riparetti, who takes a lighthearted approach to life. She wears loose, flowing clothing and short-cropped hair with long braids in the back, and she drives a Volvo with a bumper sticker proclaiming, "Bliss Happens."

"Nature is part of an unseen world that is willing to help us," she said. "When you think about how good you feel when you look at a flower or smell a flower, it makes sense. Everything has an energy -- science has proven that."

At 54, Riparetti has a life many people would envy. She lives and works not far from the beach in Santa Barbara, in a home surrounded by plants and flowers. Her small business is doing well enough that she employs several people. She works with spiritually minded people like herself, who use yoga, meditation, prayer and holistic health practices to keep their lives in balance.

Riparetti also leads annual tours to Peru, and she conducts workshops to teach people how to make essences for themselves. A one-ounce bottle of her essences sells for about $13 in New Age bookstores, on her website, and through mail order.

Humans have been making healing potions with plants and flowers for thousands of years. Similarly, almost all the world's major religions use holy water in rituals and anointments to signify healing and purity.

So while many people might scoff at the idea of flower water having healing powers, Riparetti sees her work as part of an important spiritual tradition that is being rediscovered. This awareness coincides with the coming of the millennium, she believes.

"I think that more of our senses are coming to life," Riparetti said. "It's why we can use something that is subtle like flower essences, because our energies are becoming more refined."

Born and raised in Santa Barbara, Riparetti entered the world of flower essences after leaving a successful career as the chief technician and director of the School of Nuclear Medicine at the Cancer Foundation of Santa Barbara.

Working in the field of nuclear medicine "was frustrating, because you would have five people with the same disease, treat them all the same, and some would get better and some would die. I knew there had to be something else," Riparetti said.

After leaving her job, she opened a bar called Riparetti's on the Eastside, and she became a spiritual seeker, although she wasn't sure what she was looking for. She practiced yoga and Reiki body therapy, aromatherapy and herbology; she meditated and spent time in nature.

And then she saw a tiny ad in the newspaper that said, "Flowers for healing."

"It just got to my heart and I don't know why," Riparetti said. "I had always loved flowers. I wanted all the information I could get."

Riparetti studied the teachings of Dr. Edward Bach, who popularized the use of flower essences for health in the 1930s. Riparetti became a practitioner, but the work was not as rewarding as she would have liked. So she kept an open mind about what she was to do with her new knowledge.

In 1988 she went to Peru for the first time, and hiked the famed Inca trail leading to Machu Picchu, the ancient Inca city in the Andes. On the way, she was introduced to Andean orchids, and a light went off in her head. "I thought, 'Andean Orchid essences,' but I knew I'd never make them without a Peruvian. It was not my country."

Riparetti continued to travel to Peru in the following years, and the thought of making orchid essences nagged her. Then she met the man who would be her partner, botanist Roger Valencia of Peru, an orchid expert and guide who speaks five languages and has a nonprofit organization that plants trees. With him, Star made her first batch of "mother essences" from several varieties of wild, non-threatened orchid species growing near Machu Picchu.

From this, Star Flower Essences was born.

Using orchids is significant, Riparetti said, because they are a highly evolved plant, comparable to dolphins in the animal kingdom. And they are beautiful, "demonstrating a profound understanding of natural laws," according to company literature.

There are now 74 essences available through the company, 23 from plants grown in Santa Barbara. Several are blends and some are essences from gems. ("They also have a frequency, just like colors do," Riparetti explained. "Some materials, like radioactive cobalt, have a frequency so strong and dense scientists use a Geiger counter to measure it.")

Some essences are made to coincide with important planetary events. On Aug. 11, during a cross-planetary alignment, Riparetti and her students made a Lotus essence, harvested from Lotusland in Montecito.

Riparetti's essence-making process is imbued with spiritual ritual and mindfulness. Prayers are said before an outing begins and when flowers are harvested. The essences are made by leaving the flowers to soak in the sun, in water taken from a sacred ceremonial fountain of Inca ruins. Then this "mother essence" is diluted and preserved with a bit of alcohol. Before the essences are bottled, Riparetti and her staff bless them with prayers.

Joy Bondy, who works at Paradise Found bookstore, said Star Flower Essences changed her life. She's been using them for three years.

"I did a three-day workshop with Star and I had a spiritual awakening," she said. "I could see that I was functioning in a way that was not working any more. I went from being a suburban housewife to a person on a spiritual path. It opened my eyes to new possibilities, to a healthier, more spiritual life."

Bondy said that using the flower essences is a way of seeking the higher intelligence of nature.

"There is a mystery involved. I can't say how or why it works exactly," she said. "But then, do we know why some Western medicines work? The answer is 'No.'

Riparetti gives her Star Flower Essences names and suggestions for their use. From the Santa Barbara collection, for example, "Pure Joy" is the name of the orange blossom essence, which she recommends for "renewed enthusiasm" to be "happy for no reason."

Riparetti views flowers as teachers and healers, whether people enjoy them through gardening or by spraying flower essences on their pillowcases at night.

"The flower is the highest state of the plant's expression," Riparetti says in her brochures. "Flowers are gifts from Mother Earth, telling us how much she loves us."