Spagyric Pharmacy for the Practitioner of Botanical Medicine
Many modern practitioners of herbal medicine have a calling to heal not on the body with plants, but also the more subtle levels of the mind, emotions and spirit. While many reach for flower essences to work on this vibrational level of the human, this form of preparation is lacking in the physiological attributes of the…
Alchemy and Medical Astrology in Clinical Herbalism (lecture from 2016 Breitenbush Herb Conference)
This class covers some of the critical components in regards to how incorporating western alchemy and medical astrology can radically enhance your practice of holistic herbalism. When we talk about holistic herbalism, I often see the word holistic spelled “whole-istic”- to be truly holistic we have to think about the wholeness of people and plants.…
7 Plants, 7 Planets (Renaissance Medicine Conference 2016)
I get asked all the time “how do you determine a relationship between a plant and a planet?” It’s a great question, and one I’ve asked myself and many others over the years- and most of the answers I got were “look it up in a book.” That just didn’t cut it for me. So…
The Importance of Mineral Salts in Herbal Extractions (Renaissance Medicine Conference 2016)
We had a great time at the 2016 Renaissance Medicine Conference a few weeks ago hanging out with medical astrologer Judith Hill, renowned herbalist Matthew Wood, and the spiritual botanist/herbalist Scott Kloos. In this class I taught, I discuss the how crucial the mineral salts of plants are in their extraction, specifically oriented towards the…
What Astrology can do for you as an Herbalist
As an herbalist, you love working with plants on many levels. You might be a wildcrafter, or a gardener. You might just love making herbal medicine. You probably help your friends, family, clients and community with their health through herbs. And chances are, you actually do all of the above, right? But you probably didn’t know…
Herbal Alchemy: The Water Element
Learn how to use the Elements as a lens for classifying and using herbal remedies. The Alchemical herbal perspective involves looking at the planetary rulerships of different herbs, their organ and tissue affinities, as well as providing a sophisticated and refined way of preparing herbal medicines according to astrological influences. In this video, I reveal how…
Free E-book on the Elements and Herbalism!
So I’m really excited to announce that I’ve got a new e-book called Quinta Essentia: On the Elements and Plant Medicine. I’ve been studying the Elements both directly and through various traditions that used them in their healing practice and synthesized down much of my research into this little book that I’d like to give you. Just…
What is “Energetic Architecture?”
I use the term “energetic architecture” a lot in my work- for it’s a phrase that to me truly encompasses the concept in alchemy of correspondences, or the philosophy that everything in life is interconnected, related, and the above and below are ultimately One. But what does that mean? And how do we use that philosophy practically? Energetic…
Medical Astrology and Herbalism: Mars
Mars is considered one of the “malefic” planets- IE one of the “bad guys.” Of course, no astrological archetype is purely evil or bad, unless we don’t work with it in a good way or have it well integrated into our constitution. Mars typically creates diseases associated with heat, what the old physiomedicalist doctors called…
Medical Astrology and Herbalism: Mercury
Mercury- this astrological force represents the nature of our mind and much of our psychological temperament. The closest planet to the Sun, Mercury represents the changeable mutable qualities of our thinking, as well as our capacities with language and communication. I wanted to talk a little bit about this planet and a few of my favorite…
