2024 Spiritual Herbalism School in Salt Lake City, Utah Begins

I am thrilled to share a bit about our first month of the Spiritual Herbalism School here in Salt Lake City, Utah. We have an incredible cohort of 9 people who have come together to explore the many wild ways of working with the plants. Some of the students this year have a lot of experience in working with herbs through formal education and schools, others are new to exploring the plants in a more structured way. I’m really excited to get to know this year’s group!

One of the main areas of our session focus for the first class is on the personhood of plants- reconnecting to the ancient experience that plants are wise, aware, sovereign, and virtuous beings- non-human, but person nonetheless. From there, we journey into a natural language system of the four primordial elements of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water, specifically as presented by Empedocles, and use this language as a tool to explore self, plants, disease states, and pathways to healing and harmony.

I love when we get to craft a big compass in person- looking at how all the patters of seemingly unrelated things actually dovetail together and create an intuitive hit of beauty and power!

Each person in the group was encouraged to find their own sacred center on the compass as we explored ruling body systems, energetics, tissue states, herbal actions, common disharmonies, and natural phenomenon.

Part of how we connect deeply to the plants, their wisdom, and the ways of our herbwise ancestors is through visionary journeywork whereby the plant is invited into our shared space, taken in drop-dose, and followed as the move and teach from within. The plant who guided us for the first session was Mugwort (Artemesia vulgaris) and we worked with this plant through the medium of the Nigon Wyrta Galdor of the Lacnunga.

In addition to all the classroom time and guided journeys, we also went on an urban herb walk to stretch our legs and meet some nearby plants, and worked a bonfire ritual to make offerings of gratitude to the plants and the green wisdom keepers as a way to show our love and open the ways between us.

If you’re interested in studying with me in person, please stay in touch. We have classes and workshops happening throughout the year and are gearing up for some really special online offerings this year. If you haven’t yet signed up for my monthly newsletter, that’s where you’ll see early invites to all classes and courses. You can do that HERE.