This year I signed up to take a course about wise woman healing. It is an apprenticeship type course, where we meet once a month for nine months. This year is part one of the course and there are two more years after this one.
Today was class number 4 and we made motherwort tinctures and st. joan's wort oils. I am having a wonderful time with this course. We have been shown how to make tinctures, oils, decoctions, infusions and balms/ointments. I've been introduced to plants I've not come in contact with before, like stinging nettle (it really deserves that name too). I've also been introduced to permaculture gardening, which is something I'm going to have to research.
{angelica}
I've been adding to my herbal garden, finding plants like stinging nettle, joy pye weed (also known as gravel root), anise hyssop, holy basil, self-heal, job's tears, calendula and comfrey. It's been fun adding plants of both medicinal and magical uses.
All these plants are of course causing me to spend most of my time in the gardens. If the weather is not bad and the sun is still shining, I'm to be found in the garden. I still have lots to plant and lots of sections to clear out before I can plant. It is good for me, it helps me exercise, it allows me to work out some frustrations (pulling up and clearing out sections) but best of all, it helps me to reconnect to nature and the earth.
I'm not sure that I want to become an herbalist, but I think that the things I'm learning will help to make me a better witch. :-)
Blessings
~*~
