This site uses Amazon Affiliate Links. If you click on an Amazon link from this page and make a purchase, I will – at no cost to you – earn a small commission.
I don’t know what it is about my Third Eye, but frankly I don’t think it’s putting the same amount of work in as my other two. This might be because I don’t know where it is, or even possibly because it doesn’t exist. But I reckon the most likely reason is that I haven’t been drinking enough Star Child Astral Vision herbal tea.
This magically-fortified tisane promises to help its consumer “open the third eye and tune into the psychic planes”. It contains – it tells us – “herbs traditionally associated with inner vision and astral travel”.
It’s shame I didn’t have this tea at the beginning of the pandemic, to be honest. My astral body could have got out and about without worrying about contravening COVID restrictions. It would have been a nice change of scenery.
As a beverage, Astral Vision is not pleasant to drink. Of course it isn’t. It’s made from Damiana, St. John’s Wort, Woodruff, Vervain, Violet leaves, Rosemary, Fennel, Star Anise, Aniseed, and Cinnamon. The reasonably nice-tasting bottom half of that ingredients list would have its work cut out trying to overpower the top half taste-wise, but let’s face it, tasting good is not this tea’s primary purpose. It’s got more important business. Like “assisting those who practice astral travel, channelling or divination”.
The website mentions that you can add honey to your tea should you wish. I didn’t. It felt like cheating. What is it they say? No pain, no astral plane.
On a more serious note (because in case it wasn’t clear, I haven’t been taking any of this very seriously so far), although I did try some Star Child Astral Vision for the purposes of this review, I won’t be drinking any more of it.
This is because of the second herb in this tea’s ingredient list. St. John’s Wort (Hypericum perforatum) is a herbal remedy which medical professionals strongly advise against taking if you are on antidepressants, as combining the two can induce Serotonin Syndrome, a condition which, in severe cases, can lead to seizures, loss of consciousness, and death.
I have been managing (and sometimes not managing) Clinical Depression for all of my adult life. The antidepressant Citalopram is part of the arsenal of things, which enable me to hold down a job, run a tea blog and generally go about my life doing the things that make me happy. All of which is preferable to hiding under a blanket paralysed with self hatred and hopelessness.
So yeah, not fucking up my antidepressants, is something I take very seriously.
It would have been nice if these teamongers had put some sort of warning on the tea box to this effect. Maybe they figure that the sort of people who buy astral travel tea aren’t the same people who would do something as prosaic and conventional-Western-medicine-y as take a GP-prescribed antidepressant. But seriously Star Child, this shit can kill. Sort it out.
Apart from anything else, there’s not much point in opening up your third eye and sending your astral body off to some ethereal spheres, if you’re too messed up to enjoy it when you get there.
Today’s featured book is The Wordsworth Book of Spells by Arthur Edward Waite.
