num_pages: 392
description: 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 womens plants and their 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.
language: English
title: The Herbal Lore of Wise Women and Wortcunners: The Healing Power of Medicinal Plants
publisher: North Atlantic Books