Dive into Health and Healing

There is some stigma about herbal medicine being 'witchy'. 

When I am pouring herbs for a client, someone may come in curious and ask what I am doing. I explain to them. 

“Oooh, that’s witchy!” is a common comment. I laugh and respond with “my cauldron is boiling out the back!”

While some people ponder for the first time (as did I) that plants can actually be medicine, others think it’s cool and on occasion, some superstitious person will back away as if they had accidentally stumbled into a witches den and want to escape before some voodoo magic engulfs them.

Historically, many herbalists have been accused of witchcraft and persecuted for their profession and some of that stigma sticks today.   

Powerful people who used narratives and constructs to play upon people’s superstitions that any illness was an ‘act of God’ were egocentric acts of control.

Anyone practising herbalism might prompt recovered patients to question authority and the official, accepted views. So began witch hunts. 

While sorcery is very real, it has nothing to do with herbal medicine. Sorcery is about evil intention and herbal medicine is about healing intention.

I offer you a new perspective: Hippocrates, the 'Father of medicine' advocated that we should eat whole foods when he stated 'Let medicine by thy food and let food be thy medicine.' If you nourish your body through whole foods - fruits, vegetables, crops from shrubs, trees, bushes, roots, herbs and flowers, then you are already using herbal medicine! Nothing witchy there.

Who hasn’t enjoyed a herb tea such as chamomile or peppermint and thought nothing of it. Was that a witchy thing to do?

Herbal medicine has different preparation methods across the world as it was the medicine of every indigenous culture. Not blood letting or temporal drilling or electrocution! That was western science and medicine in its cruel infancy and thankfully has come a long way since then.

Prior to the scientific discovery of constituents and actions that medicinal plants have, they were just used as the effects were known because this knowledge was taught and passed down through lineages of people selected to learn this healing craft. So herbal medicine is, in fact, original medicine. 

Terms often associated with herbs as therapy are ‘complementary’ because they can be used alongside conventional medicine or ‘alternative.’ I think this term is misleading as it suggests that herbs are new or ‘edgy’ when they are not. They might just provide an alternative to what is now considered conventional.

Tinctures and extracts are dried plant matter combined and alcohol and de-mineralized water. Alcohol and water draw the medicinal properties from the marc (plant matter) and acts as a preservative so no other preservatives are needed.

Our bodies are very accepting of plant medicine prepared correctly because our bodies recognize this form of medicine at an instinctual level. 

While most people have recovered from the ‘witch’ stigma and understand and accept that plants have healing properties, some people are still ensconced in the middle ages. They will be cared for elsewhere.