Earth Medicine

Earth Medicine

  Today's entry here is different from what I usually post - long and in-depth information on various herbs their connections to use in magickal applications/ rituals and their help in our health. 

  Today's post is going to be excerpts from the book "From Earth to Herbalist: An Earth Conscious guide to Medicinal Plants" mby Gregory L. Tilford... with a forward by Rosemary Gladstar (a name familiar to many herbalists).  I re-discovered this little book gathering dust on my many bookshelves this morning while searching for other herbal information.  I pulled it out, opened it to some of its first pages and began reading. There is some good writing here for us want-to-be herbalists to contemplate on during this winter season.  Words that can re-inspire us in our ever continuing search of learning about herbs/plants and their importance to us.

"Herbalism is a holistic approach to health and healing that addresses not only the discomforts of disease but the concept of wellness. Today we use herbs in many different capacities, often as natural alternatives to over-the-counter and prescription medicatons.  Wild cherry bark (Prunus virginicum), for instance, is used in place of codeine to suppress a cough, and topical preparations of cayenne (Capsisum species) reduce the pain and inflammation of arthritic joints. Used in this context herbs can help relieve the discomforts of illness or injury, but like most medicines that are used in this capacity, they can only approache the symptoms of disease. The holistic healer sees disease as a symptom of an underlying 'ill' that stems from deeper problems of the psyche and lifestyle. The focus of holistic healing is not to kill or cut out disease as it appears, but to prevent disease by reestablishing and maintaing a state of balance and rhythm between mind, body, spirit and environment. It is an approach to healing based on believing that illness is the result of an imbalance or disruption spanning the entire physical and nonphysical being, not just the deficiencies and/or impairments of one or more orgns or body systems.

    Holistic philosophy is fundamentally broader than that of most conventional Western medicine, which centers on intervention and suppression of disease symptoms. Western medicine is remarkable - almost miraculous - at bringing relief in times of crisis or when preventative measures can no longer be applied. And Western medicine has transformed herbs into phytopharmaceuticals - literally 'plant drugs' - that save thousands of lives each day. About 40 percent of all prescriptions and over-the-counter pharmaceuticals come directly from plant-held compounds. Foxglove, as one example in thousands, is the unrefined basis for the important cardiac drug digitalis. Several species of nightshade are useful in the production of atropine, a pupilary dilator and cardiac sedative. However, while mainstream Western medicine works well at intervening with the symptoms of disease, a growing number of people are becoming dissatisfied with its approaches toward health maintenance. Many people are becoming weary of politics, government regulations, and huge economic interests that are involved in the current administration of their health care.  (And never more than now a days.)

   The holistic practitioner uses plant medicines quite differently. Most plant drugs are derived from one or a few chemical compounds that have been isolated from the thousands that comprise a whole plant. The holistic healer uses a more complex representation of the plant, focusing not only on the most active chemical constituents, but also on the belief that there are less definable ways by all elements of a plant's chemistry intermingle to make it a complete medicine. Included in this belief are theories that the 'life energies' of plants - the phenomena that separate living things from non-living things - somehow work in synergy with the life energies of the recipient to trigger a healthful response. " 

   I will continue these posts along with my regular Herbal postings so that we can a more wide-open approach to our Herbal Studies.