Spiritual Healing, Alchemy, and Herbalism

Many herbalists have a spiritual orientation toward plants, nature, and healing. Sometimes that language can drift into territory that feels vague or overly abstract. There is nothing wrong with mystery, but I want to offer a perspective that is both spiritual and practical—one rooted in the Western alchemical tradition.

What Does It Mean to Heal?

We could spend an entire weekend talking about the word “healing.” Treating, remediating, curing, and healing are often used as if they mean the same thing. They all mean one simple thing: feeling better. However, that definition is incomplete. If you get headaches regularly and an aspirin makes them go away, has the underlying problem been healed? The symptom has been relieved, but the cause is likely still there.

To me, healing means discovering and addressing the factors that give rise to health problems. That does not mean symptom relief is unimportant! Helping someone suffer less matters a lot. It is one of the great gifts of herbal medicine. But relief and healing are not always the same thing.

Usually, especially with chronic illness, there is not one single root cause. There is a network of contributing factors: nourishment, digestion, sleep, stress, environment, inherited tendencies, emotional patterns, beliefs, and more. Healing asks us to work with that whole network rather than looking for a single answer.

Plants can ease symptoms and help correct deeper imbalances. They may provide nourishment, support a weakened organ system, or help restore a healthier ecological state in the tissues. From a humoral perspective, that can mean moistening what is too dry, cooling what is too hot, warming what is too cold, or bringing excess back toward moderation. That is healing on the physical level. But from an alchemical perspective, plants can also work with subtler levels of the human being, which brings us to the spirit.

What is the Spirit?

Many people think of the spirit as simply the animating factor of the body, an undifferentiated force that gives us life. Some think of the spirit as a ghostly apparition of the physical self that can travel through the astral realms and detach from the physical body. 

However, in the Western alchemical tradition, spirit has a specific, all-encompassing definition with various layers. To give some context, central to their overarching schema of the human organism is a triune pattern: the tria prima, or the three philosophical principles:

• Sulfur: the soul
• Mercury: the spirit
• Salt: the body

In alchemical philosophy, everything in creation has a soul, a spirit, and a body. This applies not only to humans but also to plants, animals, minerals, mountains, rivers, water, and fire. Everything in nature and the cosmos contains these three principles. It has a trinity of being that enables it to exist in this three-dimensional reality. 

One important point is that the soul and spirit are not the same. We often use these words interchangeably, but alchemy makes a useful distinction between them. Sulfur, the soul, is the essential nature of a being. It is the core of who you are, the unique character and inner identity that comes from God. In astrological symbolism, it is like the Sun: the center around which everything else orbits.

On the other hand, Mercury, the spirit, mediates between the soul and the body. It is the means by which the soul is embodied and expressed through the Salt, or physical form.

The Three Aspects of Spirit and Mercury

In alchemy, spirit or Mercury is said to have three particular qualities — a trinity within the trinity. This is a common theme in the Mercury archetype, also known as the thrice-great Hermes Trismegistus. The symbol for Mercury is the crescent above the circle above the cross. In astrological symbolism, those three glyphs come together in various ways to represent the planets. Among the seven inner planets, Mercury is the only one that contains all three symbols, denoting its triune nature. We also see this in the older pantheons with Mercury. Hermes is the messenger of the gods who moves from the upper world into the middle world and the lower world. It can traverse those three layers of the vertical axis of reality. In that way, the spirit has a triune nature. 

1. Spirit is Universal

The first aspect of the triune nature of Mercury and the spirit is that it is universal. There is one universal spirit that flows through all things, which imbues the soul into the body. Sulfur is the most volatile aspect of the self, and we see this in plants. 

The spirit is that which anchors the soul to the body. It is what allows the soul to enter this physical form: the Salt. It is the spirit that connects all things in the great web of life, into the great pattern of existence, into the logos. The spirit is the concept of universality. 

This is the aspect of spirit that people refer to when they speak of oneness or interconnectedness. It is the living current that moves through nature and joins the individual to the greater pattern of existence. In Western herbalism, this is commonly referred to as the vital force. The vital force is that undifferentiated, neutral force that imbues all things with life. 

2. Spirit Is Psychological

Mercury, the spirit, is also our psychological nature. Though the mind is not exactly the spirit, the mind is a facet of the spirit. 

In alchemy, each philosophical principle has a particular elemental composition. Sulfur emerges from a recombination of Fire and Air. Salt emerges due to a recombination of Earth and Water, and Mercury is a recombination of Air and Water. The mercurial principle is the bridge between the volatile and the fixed, between the heavenly and the earthly, and between the celestial and the terrestrial. Its elemental composition is Air, of the volatile realm, and Water, of the fixed realm. 

Air is the most fixed of the volatile elements, Water is the most volatile of the fixed elements, and Mercury unites them. It is the bridge between what is volatile and what is fixed, heavenly and earthly, celestial and terrestrial.

According to the energetic or esoteric anatomy of the human organism based on Jung’s analysis of alchemy, the Air element correlates to thoughts, our psychological nature, and mind. Water is our feeling, emotional nature. Together, this makes up our psychology. You might think of psychology as your mental state, but it is also your emotions.

When a person goes to a psychotherapist, they talk about their feelings and emotions. In this way, the spirit is the vehicle through which the soul enters the body, and the nature of the soul is translated into our thoughts and feelings through Mercury.

This is why our beliefs matter so much. Our beliefs shape the way we perceive the world, and our perceptions influence our thoughts, feelings, and reactions. When we say someone is in “high spirits,” we are describing something real and practical: a person whose outlook, emotions, and energy are lifted. When someone’s spirits are low, we mean the opposite. The spirit, in this sense, is not a vague ghostly image of ourselves. It is present in the quality of our inner life.

3. Spirit is Embodied in the Breath and Heart

The third aspect of Mercury is within the body, in our respiratory system. The symbolism is perfect because the respiratory system is the breath of life. It is the invisible nutriment of the body derived from the Air element. 

Within the lungs, Air and Water come together again, which is an aspect of our spirit. The Greek term pneuma relates to the lungs and the breath, but also to the animating spirit within them. We see a similar concept in the East with prāna, the life force derived from the Air aspect. Prāna isn’t the oxygen itself; it is the invisible nutriment. 

The spirit, in a way, is stored within the heart. We breathe in the spirit from the outside; our lungs receive it, and it goes to the heart through the pulmonary circulation. Then the heart distributes it throughout the organism to oxygenate the tissues and deliver that vital force to the rest of the body, sustaining life. This is a similar concept in Chinese medicine, where they speak of the shen as the spirit that resides in the heart.

Alchemy is fractal in its way of seeing the world. Every organ has its own relationship to Sulfur, Mercury, and Salt. Each has a particular identity, function, and form. The trinity is present in the whole person and within every part of the person.

What Is Spiritual Sickness?

To speak about spiritual healing, we first need to discuss how the spirit becomes ill. As we’ve seen above, in alchemy, the spirit is the mediator between the soul and the body. Therefore, what occurs within the soul affects the spirit, and what occurs within the body affects the spirit. Both can make the spirit sick. This can occur either top-down (soul to spirit) or bottom-up (body to spirit). 

Spiritual Sickness from the Top Down: Soul to Spirit

Spiritual sickness is all around us in the form of chronic anxiety, panic attacks, depression, melancholy, and an overall lack of meaning in life. Many of these problems stem from a sickness in the soul. 

In my opinion and understanding, these issues can only be remedied by having a direct relationship with the creator, God. However, plants can assist us by opening the spirit, soul, and body to cleansing and purification, supporting our relationship with God. 

The spiritual ills we have these days have, at their core, atheistic, nihilistic ideologies, and ideas that are strictly materialistic, scientific worldviews. When our mental models ascribe no meaning to life, instead reducing everything to simple biochemical interactions, nothing really matters, and it’s difficult to have a meaningful life. The idea that nothing matters is anxiety-provoking, and it’s a depressing worldview. 

Identity is a heated topic of late, culturally and politically, and while I don’t want to start a political debate, I do want to describe what I see as the metaphysics of identity. I once heard someone describe the premise of identity as layers of an onion, with the center layer being your spiritual identity. I think of the center layer as the living soul, the essence, or Sulfur. It is your direct connection to the creator, God. That is the foundation of the entire structure of identity. 

The next layer consists of the ways you might describe yourself, which are important to who you are. You might be a mother, a father, a teacher, or an artist. 

The most superficial layer of identity is made up of likes and dislikes, attractions and aversions. Examples are what kind of music you like and dislike, what kind of food you like and dislike, and what makes you feel happy or unhappy. However, those things don’t define who you are. Being a parent or a man or a woman isn’t the center of who you are. These are peripheral aspects of you. However, the center of the onion can collapse, and when you strip away the spiritual identity, the essence of who you are and your connection to God, the outer layers can collapse into the middle. When that happens, your identity, who you think you are, begins to be defined by something peripheral to your being, and those things then replace God. 

In this state, feelings can become deified. Your personal feelings are not my truth, and my truth is not your truth, and this leads to disastrous results within our psychological health. So, with this concept of the soul affecting the spirit from the top down, we need to think about what our belief system is. What is our ideology and mode of perception? At the center of that should be the human soul. 

Spiritual Sickness from the Bottom Up: Body to Spirit

Anyone who has practiced clinically knows that when you change the state of the body, you change the state of the mind. If you’ve ever been in chronic pain, you know exactly what I mean. When your body hurts, it takes a toll on your mind. Yet, sometimes it’s subtler than that. 

We can see this in the spiritual effects of food intolerance and systemic inflammation. Paul Bergner talks about guiding people through a food-elimination challenge in which they cut out certain foods for six to eight weeks, then reintroduce them one at a time to see how their bodies react. What he documented in his clinic at the North American Institute of Medical Herbalism was that, most of the time, the first notable symptoms upon reintroducing an intolerant food are mood, energy, and cognitive symptoms. 

Mood is your emotional state, and cognition is your mental state, which is the textbook definition of spirit in alchemy. People eat gluten or dairy or whatever it may be, and have a food intolerance. Because of the gut-brain connection, they get tired, cloudy, sluggish, and depressed. Or, they become irritable, frustrated, and anxious. Typically, someone’s response is constitutionally predetermined by their temperament, but these are clear indicators that the state of the body is directly tied to the state of the spirit. 

People can also become spiritually sick straight from the spirit. Paracelsus called these invisible causes of disease. Sometimes people intentionally direct ill thoughts and feelings toward someone. Many cultures say that if someone died in a particular spot, and you step on that spot, you can be affected. In some traditions, touching a dead body can affect you spiritually. Depression can emerge from that because your fingerprint is now on that person who is under the ground, and it drags you down. In many traditional cultures, these concerns are handled by a medicine person or shaman with the knowledge and ability to do so, and often herbs are involved. 

Spiritual Healing

Now we have arrived at our central questions: Can plants help on this level of healing, and if so, how does that work? 

Using a top-down or bottom-up model can be a helpful way to think about how plants can help heal us spiritually. The bottom-up approach is the simplest. When you’re suffering in body, it affects your spirit. If you have chronic pain or crippling anxiety and you can’t go out in public, that seriously affects your quality of life. Simply getting to the roots of the physical aspects of those issues will make your spirit feel better. When your mind is uplifted, your heart is uplifted, and you simply feel better. 

My mom, who has been a sufferer of chronic pain for a long time, has a saying which I like, though it is a little pessimistic. She says, “Chronic pain can take the best of you and leave the rest for everybody else.” If you have ever experienced chronic pain or illness, you know that it necessitates a very strong spiritual resolve to not let it drag you down to the point of despair, hopelessness, depression, melancholy, or anger. 

It is human nature to want to grow, heal your soul, and deepen your connection to God, nature, the cosmos, and life. It is natural to want to feel connected to our own essence, development, and the improvement of our character. We want to resolve our past and our traumas. Chronic pain and illness make it very difficult to do that. It can become a chicken-or-the-egg situation. To resolve the physical health problem, is there something from the past that needs to be resolved? Is there something within your character that needs to be adjusted that is contributing to the physical health problem? Or does the physical issue need to be resolved to liberate some vital force so you can then work on yourself on other levels? 

Each person has only so much vitality. When you’re sick or in pain all the time, when your body is in a state of imbalance, and your vital force is directed toward maintaining homeostasis, or homeodynamis, as best it can. In that case, your vital force probably doesn’t have what it needs to contemplate the nature of God, your big life purpose, or your visions, hopes, and dreams for the future. 

You can revitalize your body through proper diet, optimal digestion, adequate sleep, addressing burnout, and optimizing your health and vitality, so that your vital force isn’t spent on mundane physical corrections. In that way, it can volatilize and move up from the Salt into the Mercury and into the Sulfur, so it is liberated to operate more on the spirit and soul level.

The Microcosm of the Macrocosm

In this post, I discussed the alchemical concept that the psyche reflects the structure of the cosmos and that each person is a microcosm and reflection of the macrocosm. 

This is reflected in the structure of our solar system, the seven planets and constellations, the Earth’s seasons, the elements, the signs, etc. As humans, we are born as a microcosm of those forces. Some of the forces may be in excess, some in deficiency, and others in balance. It is possible for us to express their virtues, or their shadow sides, or vices.

For example, the planet Mars can be a highly driven, energetic, motivated go-getter, have a powerful impact on the world, and be very protective. It is the archetype of the warrior. On the other side, it can be angry, controlling, dominating, and violent. Likewise, Jupiter can be generous and kind, benevolent and uplifting, with an abundance of faith and belief. It can also be boastful, arrogant, and gluttonous. 

Alchemy: Transforming Vice Into Virtue

From an alchemical perspective, you can understand the nature of your spirit through the lens of archetypal forces of creation and the structures of the cosmos and the psyche. In alchemy, herbs too embody the characteristics of planetary archetypal powers, but in a medicinal capacity. 

Burdock is a great example of a Jupiter herb. Because it is a medicine, by its very nature, it will be healing to that archetype. The plant is a vehicle through which the archetypal force operates to help transform that archetype within the psyche. It also works on that same archetype in the body, because alchemical medicines contain the Sulfur, Mercury, and Salt of the plant, and thus heal those same layers of the person. The entire art of alchemy is the transformation of poison into medicine and vice into virtue. The art of medical alchemy is the transformation of archetypal forces through the preparation of spagyric remedies. The spagyrically prepared remedies embody the archetypal forces and work within the human being on all three levels. We also have a differentiation within the remedies: volatile remedies that work top-down and fixed remedies that work bottom-up. 

Plants have a variety of ways to support the healing of the human spirit. Indeed, there are other ways of working with plants that can benefit us spiritually. Even on a physical level, herbs might act as nootropics and help clarify the mind, or they might act as nervines to calm the nerves, anxiety, and settle your spirit. 

The Ultimate Healing Power

God is the ultimate physician of the soul. I believe there is a necessity to accept the creator God into our hearts and lives, and that when this occurs, great transformation and incredible healing occur in people’s lives within the spirit and soul. 

Paracelsus discusses this extensively in his writings on alchemy, even in how he describes the roles of the alchemist and the healer or physician. He says that the true physician strives toward a state of godliness. They are mystical because they’re striving to be instruments through which the healing power of God works. 

I see herbalists in the same way. We have the capacity to be a vehicle through which the healing power of the creator God can operate. That healing power can guide us to the right remedies to help people. When we work with plants intentionally, alchemically, and spagyrically, in prayer, with a healthy amount of self-reflection, it is powerful. 

You may be familiar with this prayer, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” That’s it right there. The strength to change what you can change, and the grace and the ability to accept the things you cannot. We’ve all been traumatized to a degree, and you can’t change the past. But you can change your perception of it. You can change how it affects you now and what you do in the world. 

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FAQ

What is spiritual healing with herbs?

In Sajah Popham’s view, healing supports the whole person: body, spirit, and soul, not just symptoms.

What are Sulfur, Mercury, and Salt?

They are the three philosophical principles of Western alchemy: Sulfur represents the soul, Mercury the spirit, and Salt the body.

Is the spirit the same as the soul?

Not in this alchemical framework. The soul is a person’s essential nature, while the spirit mediates between soul and body.

How can physical health affect the spirit?

Pain, exhaustion, inflammation, and other physical burdens can affect mood, clarity, energy, and emotional resilience.

What is the vital force?

It is the traditional concept of the life-giving force that animates and connects living beings.

How do herbs support spiritual healing?

They may help by easing physical burdens, supporting the nervous system and mental clarity, and working with broader alchemical patterns of balance and transformation.

What is a spagyric remedy?

A spagyric remedy is an alchemically prepared plant medicine that incorporates the plant’s Sulfur, Mercury, and Salt principles through a very precise process.