06/06/2025
The ultimate conquest of all will be through love and gentleness, and when we have sufficiently developed these two qualities nothing will be able to assail us, since we shall ever have compassion and not offer resistance. [Bach: Collected Writings]
The Holly state describes all kinds of strongly negative emotions that not only burn within a person but express themselves in destructive, even violent behaviour. It is for ‘jealousy, envy, revenge, suspicion, the different forms of vexation’.
Of course, we all know what it feels like, both to be shaken by our own anger and to be shaken by the anger of others. Holly is for when this anger and the stimulus of it has become habitual. Instead of occasionally being angry, jealous, hate-filled every situation that provokes a reaction turns to rage.
It has been suggested that this is the most important of the 38 Bach remedies since it is for hatred and rage. But Bach put it another way, saying that it was a protection ‘from everything that is not Universal Love’. In this he was attempting to avoid the usual negative characterisation of emotions which only grow larger the more we concentrate upon them. Anger is not wrong of itself, but the lack of love can cause us problems. We only feel hatred when we cannot feel love; the two are mutually exclusive. Holly is for any strongly negative emotion that violates the sanctity of life.
https://www.bachflowerlearning.com/the-language-of-plants/holly/
