Herbal Medicine is the peoples’ medicine. Plants are generous healers, our teachers, and elders. We’ll explore how plants help us deepen our connection to the Earth and help us attune to the cycles of the moon.

We’ll have a Full Moon Ritual with Artemisia vulgaris. It is best to experience this on or near a Full Moon. Artemisia offers to un-tame us and helps us remember our night dreams, as well as the dreams of our hearts.

Robin Rose shares artemisia ritual recipes for tea and hand, foot, or body baths, as well as several recipes for smoke mixtures featuring this amazing plant.

This Module focuses on ways to nourish and support the ground of our being – our overall immunity – in order to be as well as possible, while also learning how to lessen the intensity of illness with variations on recipes such as Robin’s “personal sustainability blend” of red clover (Trifolium spp.), nettles (Urtica spp.), and oat straw (Avena sativa).

Robin will share about the best ways to use lung strengthening herbs such as white pine (Pinus spp.) and mullein (Verbascum spp.), and about building a healthy immune system with vegetable and/or bone soups containing garlic and onions, roots such as burdock (Arctium spp.), ginger (Zingiber o.), Astragalus spp., dried and fresh mushrooms such as Chagas (Inonotus obliquus) and shiitakes (Lentinula edodes), and a variety of seaweeds. 

We’ll explore why humans have always participated in rituals, and why it is healing to restore authentic ritual practices at this time. We will delve into creative aspects of crafting potent, meaningful rituals, on your own or in community. We’ll engage with the elements, create sacred space, explore symbols and metaphors, craft altars, and discuss divination and timing as we delve into some possibilities for spontaneous, daily, solar, and lunar rituals and ceremonies.

We will be exploring/experiencing a number of magical herbs, continuing our exploration of mugwort/cronewort (Artemisia vulgaris and other artemisias), and Grandmother cedar (Thuja occidentale), Rue (Ruta graveolens), Agrimony (Agrimonia spp.), and Marigold (Calendula officinalis), among others. 

We are in the midst of an evolutionary shift, a time of death and rebirth, moving from the age of separation into the age of unity. Our dear hearts need nourishment. Heart disease runs rampant, as does despair and numbness. We’ll look at how herbs help us express our grief, nourish our joy , and heal our hearts. Joy is medicine.

We’ll explore heart-healing foods including red and blue berries, along with herbs such as hawthorn (Cratageus spp.) and rosemary (Rosmarinus spp.) that help maintain and restore the health of the heart itself. Herbs can help tone veins, strengthen arteries, and reduce plaque, as well as support the kidneys which are key in maintaining healthy blood pressure.

Herbs excel at providing medicine for this amazing covering that is nearly waterproof and acutely sensitive to pleasure, pain, and temperature changes. Our skin is also a vital part of our innate immune system, and this beautiful covering can help us get clearer about where we end and others begin!

We’ll explore a range of approaches from herbal scrubs with oatmeal and steams with elder blossoms (Sambucus spp.) to clear the skin, to herbal infusions such as rose blossoms (Rosa spp.) or plantain (Plantago spp.)  leaves that can help our skin from the inside out. Anti-fungal and anti-viral herbs such as basil (Occimum spp.) marigold (Calendula) can clear skin infections like ringworm; soothing herbs such as chickweed (Stellaria spp.) can be drunk and applied for rashes.

In spring the energy of the Earth is rising, and herbs can help us rise to meet and greet the light that is growing longer now! Movement, food rich in nutrients, time outdoors, and of course, herbal infusions and flowers in our food can all help awaken our vitality. We’ll share a Spring Equinox ritual and invite ourselves to play!

Awakening the vital life force; nettles, red clover, dandelions roots, leaves and flowers (Taraxacum spp.), violet leaves and flowers (Viola spp.) and wild foods such as garlic mustard (Alaria p.) and plantain are all ready to give themselves to us generously.