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…
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 even harvesting the plant… It’s…
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…
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…
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…