Alchemy and Herbalism Part II- The Macrocosm and Microcosm
Welcome to part two in our alchemy and herbalism series. In part one, I shared with you how throughout history as science became more of the dominant worldview, a mechanistic model stripped the spirit and the meaning out of cultures and systems and traditions, and we looked at how that affects our perspective of people…
Alchemy and Herbalism Part I – The Science and Spirituality of Herbalism
Welcome to the first part of a four-part series discussing alchemy and herbalism. The tradition of alchemy is a tradition dear to my heart. I’m excited to share some of these teachings with you because the alchemical tradition was the missing piece of the puzzle on my quest for a holistic system of herbal medicine.…
Spagyrics: Ancient Medicine for the Modern World
There’s something that I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. I’ve been looking at the state of the world and everything that’s been going on politically and culturally. With the fires that we’ve been having out here on the West Coast, it feels like things are heating up—literally—on planet earth right now. I’ve been thinking…
Spagyrics: Ancient Medicine for the Modern World
The world needs healing right now more than ever. And not just patching up symptoms and definitely not suppressing them- we all need deep healing within our bodies, minds, hearts and souls. We need healing that will reconnect us with our true nature internally, as well as the natural world externally. This is desperately needed…
Fire: The Element of Transformation
Most people think the first step in creating a spagyric herbal extract is the separation of the volatile Sulfur of the plant. To translate that into something understandable, that means distillation of the essential oils. But I beg to differ!! To me, the first step in creating a spagyric isn’t distilling the essential oils, or…
A Guide for Building your Herbal (and Alchemical) Library
We get asked all of the time “what are your favorite herb books?” – so we thought it’s about time we just compiled a list and posted it here for everyone to enjoy. It can be incredibly helpful while on the plant path to know where to go to get valuable and reliable information about…
The Art of Distillation
Distillation is one of the primary alchemical processes used in the production of true spagyric extracts. The 2 primary methods of distillation used are for essential oils, which extracts the Sulfur (Soul) of the plant, as well as for alcohol, which extracts the Mercury (Spirit) of the plant. The process of distillation can be…
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…
