Hailed as a “classic” by leading herbalist Rosemary Gladstar, this botanical compendium provides a wide-ranging history of herbalism and useful guidance for healing with herbs Matthew Wood is one of the United States’ most renowned herbalists and the author of Seven Herbs: Plants as Healers, a watershed book in teaching herbal healing as a part of total wellness. With The Book of Herbal Wisdom, he continues and expands this study, creating a must-read guide for anyone who works in the natural health field or is interested in self-healing with herbs. Wood creates a vast and sweeping history of herbalism, drawing on Western botanical knowledge, homeopathy, Traditional Chinese medicine, and Native American shamanic botany. Detailing the history and use of more than forty plants, he shows how each tradition views a plant, as well as its use in cases drawn from his own herbal and homeopathic practice. An initial section describes signatures, similar, and patterns in these traditions, and elements, temperaments, and constitutions. Wood has two objectives: to demonstrate how herbal medicines are agents of healing and wisdom, and to give the reader a useful catalog of plants for medicinal uses. His clinical observations of his patients bear the wry wisdom of the country doctor; his love of plants is evident in lush botanical descriptions, which show the connection between remedies—whether homeopathic, Chinese, or Native American—and the plants from which they are derived. An introduction to centuries of lore about healing from indigenous traditions, The Book of Herbal Wisdom integrates and describes North American Indian medicine, homeopathy, Traditional Chinese Medicine, and Western herbalism like no other contemporary botanical compendium.

Discover the healing applications of a wide variety of medicinal plants with this first comprehensive herbal repertory from an internationally known herbalist Expert herbalist Matthew Wood takes the guesswork out of the application of medicinal plants. Here, he provides an invaluable cross-reference of constitutional types, energetic categories, and specific systems—so herbalists can more easily identify the right remedies for a specific condition. Unlike many reference books in which medicinal plants are defined simply by condition or disease name, this book offers tools for differentiating between remedies and analyzing each case in a holistic fashion. While this system of cross-referencing is well known to homeopaths, it is less frequently used by herbalists. The Earthwise Herbal Repertory seeks to bridge the gap between different healing systems, incorporating knowledge from ancient Greek and traditional Native American medicine, nineteenth-century botanical medicine, homeopathy, and modern biomedical research. This definitive repertory proves useful for homeopaths and herbalists, professionals and home practitioners alike.

Consulting plant spirits for spiritual and psychological guidance and healing • Reveals how, by communing with the deva or spirit of a plant, we can call forth its medicine without even needing to ingest it • Includes wisdom from the devas of 13 herbs, such as rosemary, datura, and uva ursi • Empowers readers with the tools to develop their own inner resources for healing in relationship with the plant devas around them Each plant has a story to share with us, a healing story to guide us in trying times, a spirit medicine for the New Earth that is presently unfolding. Herbs are some of the most powerful allies we have for these transitional times--we just need to learn how to listen as they share their knowledge with us. In Wisdom of the Plant Devas, Thea Summer Deer reveals a new dimension of herbal medicine, one where the plant’s spirit is consulted for guidance and healing beyond the physical. Examining the botany, modern and traditional uses, history, and folklore of 13 special herbs, such as rosemary, uva ursi, and datura, she shares divinations and messages from their devas, or plant spirits, explaining how these stories carry the herbs into our lives, letting them work their magic on us. Exploring herbal medicine from an energetic perspective, she reveals that by communing with the deva of a plant, we can call on the plant’s physical, psychological, and spiritual medicine and guidance--without ingesting it or even being in its presence. Detailing the sacred space of a Medicine Wheel Garden, whether in a backyard or our imaginations, she connects us with the devas and empowers us to seek our own answers with their much-needed spiritual guidance and divinatory advice. Creating a bridge between botanical medicine and plant spirit medicine, she shows how by coming into community with the devas and co-creating with the world of nature, we can gain tremendous insights to help heal our hearts, our minds, and our spirits and consciously evolve as together we birth the New Earth.

The historical use of plants by indigenous peoples is explored, and how this connects to universal experiences of the sacred in everyday life.

This “deep excursion into the heart of herbalism” pulls back the curtain on centuries of herbal medicine and offers an inventory of useful plants for the modern herb gardener or homesteader (Rosemary Gladstar) Traditional herbalists or wise women were not only good botanists or pharmacologists; they were also shamanic practitioners and keepers of occult knowledge about the powerful properties of plants. Traveling back to the healing arts of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, The Herbal Lore of Wise Women and Wortcunners takes readers deep into this world, through the leechcraft of heathen society and witches’ herb bundles to the cloister gardens of the Middle Ages. It also examines herbal medicine today in the traditional Chinese apothecary, the Indian ayurvedic system, homeopathy, and Native American medicine. Balancing the mystical with the practical, author Wolf Storl explains how to become an herbalist, from collecting material to distilling and administering medicines. He includes authoritative advice on herb gardening, as well as a holistic inventory of plants used for purposes both benign and malign, from herbs for cooking, healing, beauty, and body care to psychedelic plants, witches’ salves for opening alternative realities, and poisonous herbs that can induce madness or cause death. Storl also describes traditional “women’s plants” and their uses: dyeing cloth, spinning and weaving, or whipping up love potions. The Herbal Lore of Wise Women and Wortcunners is written for professional and amateur herbalists as well as gardeners, urban homesteaders, and plantspeople interested in these rich ancient traditions.

In this companion volume to The Earthwise Herbal: A Complete Guide to Old World Medicinal Plants, Matthew Wood, an expert herbalist who has used medicinal herbs with tens of thousands of patients over a twenty-five-year career, provides detailed descriptions of New World (North American) herbs and their uses. Organized as a materia medica (names and descriptions of herbs/plants are listed alphabetically), the book explains the use of the whole plant (not just “active ingredients”) in the treatment of the whole person and describes symptoms and conditions that the plants have been successful in treating—from digestive ailments, headaches, and high blood pressure to asthma, skin rashes, and allergies, to name a few. Wood, who has systematically studied ancient and traditional herbal literature, takes a historical view and presents information in a thoughtful, engaging, nontechnical style. In addition, he provides remarkable case studies as well as insight into the “logic” of each plant—its current and past usage, pharmacological constituents, and other elements that together produce a comprehensive portrait of each herb.

A distillation of thirty-five years of experience and experimentation, A Herbal Book of Making and Taking is a collection of essential wisdom for the aspiring herbalist. Put together by one of the most loved and respected teams in modern herbal medicine, the book is filled with clear, concise instructions and detailed recipes trialled over decades of practice. Originally intended as a teaching aid for herbal students, this is a comprehensive guide to the craft of medicine making for the modern herbalist. Including exercises and tasks for the interested student, the book covers everything from growing and harvesting herbs to using them in internal and external medicines. From infusions and tinctures to syrups, soups, and suppositories, this is a gift to future herbalists drawing on a lifetime of study.