Book picks similar to
Pharmako/Poeia: Plant Powers, Poisons, and Herbcraft by Dale Pendell
non-fiction
nonfiction
plants
herbalism
The Immortality Key: Uncovering the Secret History of the Religion with No Name
Brian C. Muraresku - 2020
In the tradition of unsolved historical mysteries like David Grann's Killers of the Flower Moon and Douglas Preston's The Lost City of the Monkey God, Brian Muraresku’s 10-year investigation takes the reader through Greece, Germany, Spain, France and Italy, offering unprecedented access to the hidden archives of the Louvre and the Vatican along the way.In The Immortality Key, Muraresku explores a little-known connection between the best-kept secret in Ancient Greece and Christianity. This is the real story of the most famous human being who ever lived (Jesus) and the biggest religion the world has ever known. Today, 2.4 billion people are Christian. That's one third of the planet. But do any of them really know how it all started?Before Jerusalem, before Rome, before Mecca—there was Eleusis: the spiritual capital of the ancient world. It promised immortality to Plato and the rest of Athens's greatest minds with a very simple formula: drink this potion, see God. Shrouded in secrecy for millennia, the Ancient Greek sacrament was buried when the newly Christianized Roman Empire obliterated Eleusis in the fourth century AD.Renegade scholars in the 1970s claimed the Greek potion was psychedelic, just like the original Christian Eucharist that replaced it. In recent years, vindication for the disgraced theory has been quietly mounting in the laboratory. The rapidly growing field of archaeological chemistry has proven the ancient use of visionary drugs. And with a single dose of psilocybin, the psycho-pharmacologists at Johns Hopkins and NYU are now turning self-proclaimed atheists into instant believers. No one has ever found hard, scientific evidence of drugs connected to Eleusis, let alone early Christianity. Until now.Armed with key documents never before translated into English, convincing analysis, and a captivating spirit of quest, Muraresku mines science, classical literature, biblical scholarship and art to deliver the hidden key to eternal life, bringing us to what clinical psychologist William Richards calls "the edge of an awesomely vast frontier."Featuring a Foreword by Graham Hancock, the New York Times bestselling author of America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization.
Real Witches Garden
Kate West - 2004
Whether readers have 20 acres of plants or only a window box, real Witches can cultivate a powerful garden that expands and deepens their magic.
Llewellyn's Complete Formulary of Magical Oils: Over 1200 Recipes, Potions & Tinctures for Everyday Use
Celeste Rayne Heldstab - 2011
Whether your intention is magical or medicinal, specially blended essential oils can enrich your life with their mystical, energizing, and transformative power.Within this one-of-a-kind portable apothecary, learn to select and mix 67 essential oils for a myriad of magical, medicinal, and spiritual applications. Spanning every purpose from inner calm and romance to healing and energy work to prayer and spellcraft, all 1,200 recipes are arranged alphabetically to make it easy to find precisely what you need.Step by step, Celeste Rayne Heldstab also shows how to create your own blends for spells, rituals, and remedies. Amp up their potency with correspondences for the elements, day of the week, time of day, Moon phase, astrological sign, herbs, and gemstones.Protection for house & home Love & passion Career & finances Dreamwork & meditation Beauty & skin care Fatigue, headaches, & other common ailments Praise: Celeste skillfully demystifies the process of using and blending oils by providing lucid, detailed, and easy-to-read instructions while emphasizing the magical power inherent in plants.--Judika Illes, author of The Encyclopedia of 5,000 Spells
Blackthorn's Botanical Magic: The Green Witch’s Guide to Essential Oils for Spellcraft, Ritual Healing
Amy Blackthorn - 2018
From rose-scented rosaries to the lingering aroma of frankincense, and the cleansing energy of white sage, Amy Blackthorn-- the woman behind Blackthorn Hoodoo Blends --will take you on a journey beyond the soothing, healing power of scents into their hidden realms and their use in prayer, meditation, and shamanic journeying. One of the very first of its kind, this book includes:The rich history and lore of scent-related magicOver 135 essential oil recipes and craft projectsAn explanation of how magical aromatherapy can enhance divination with tarot and runesPractical information regarding the purchasing, blending, and storing of essential oils
The Witch's Herbal Apothecary: Rituals Recipes for a Year of Earth Magick and Sacred Medicine Making
Marysia Miernowska - 2020
Mother Earth is a living entity that holds great medicine to heal us physically and spiritually. However, in today's modern world, too many of us are separated from this source of nourishment. With the wheel of the year as a framework, you'll begin to understand the currents of nature and how to weave yourself back into this great web of life. Using the plants, seasons, and cycles as your tools, you will be able to tap into the potent Earth Magick of life, death, renewal, and rebirth. In harmony with the seasons, You will learn how to:Grow medicineHarvest from the wild or home gardenProcess plantsMake remediesEach season opens a portal of magick that allows you to harvest the literal and spiritual gifts the Earth is offering at that time.The Witch's Herbal Apothecary will awaken the Witch inherent in every wild soul and guide her into an empowered relationship of healing and magick with the natural world.
Alchemy & Mysticism
Alexander Roob - 1996
This unique selection of illustrations with commentaries and source texts guides us on a fascinating journey through the representations of the secret arts.
The Earthwise Herbal: A Complete Guide to Old World Medicinal Plants
Matthew Wood - 2008
The first in a two-volume set, The Earthwise Herbal profiles Old World plants (volume two will treat American plants). Organized alphabetically, the book encompasses all of the major—and many of the secondary—herbs of traditional and modern Western herbalism. Author Wood describes characteristic symptoms and conditions in which each plant has proved useful in the clinic, often illustrated with appropriate case histories. In addition, he takes a historical view based on his extensive study of ancient and traditional herbal literature. Written in an easy, engaging, non-technical style, The Earthwise Herbal offers insight into the “logic” of the plant: how it works, in what areas of the body it works, how it has been used in the past, what its pharmacological constituents indicate about its use, and how all these different factors hang together to produce a portrait of the plant as a whole entity. Ideal for beginners, serious students, or advanced practitioners, The Earthwise Herbal is also useful for homeopaths and flower essence practitioners as it bridges these fields in its treatment of herbal medicines.
Adaptogens: Herbs for Strength, Stamina, and Stress Relief
David Winston - 2007
In Adaptogens, authors David Winston and Steven Maimes provide a comprehensive look into adaptogens, non-toxic herbs such as ginseng, eleuthero, and licorice, that produce a defensive response to stress in our bodies. Formerly known as rejuvenating herbs or tonics, adaptogens help the body to “adapt” to the many influences it encounters. They increase stamina and counter the normal effects of aging and thus are becoming important tools in sports medicine and in the prevention and treatment of chronic fatigue and other stress-related disorders. Winston and Maimes present the historical uses of these herbal remedies in India, Russia, China, and the Americas and explain how they work and why they are so effective at combating stress-induced illness. Monographs for each adaptogen also present the latest scientific research and include the origin, traditional use, actions, properties, preparation, and dosage for each herb.
Waking the Witch: Reflections on Women, Magic, and Power
Pam Grossman - 2019
When you think of a witch, what do you picture? Pointy black hat, maybe a broomstick. But witches in various guises have been with us for millennia. In Waking the Witch, Pam Grossman explores the cultural and historical impact of the world’s most magical icon. From the idea of the femme fatale in league with the devil in early modern Europe and Salem, to the bewitching pop culture archetypes in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and Harry Potter; from the spooky ladies in fairy tales and horror films to the rise of feminist covens and contemporary witchcraft, witches reflect the power and potential of women. In this fascinating read that is part cultural analysis, part memoir, Pam opens up about her own journey on the path to witchcraft, and how her personal embrace of the witch helped her find strength, self-empowerment, and a deeper purpose. A comprehensive meditation on one of the most mysterious and captivating figures of all time, Waking the Witch celebrates witches past, present, and future, and reveals the critical role they have played—and will continue to play—in shaping the world as we know it.
Samhain: Rituals, Recipes & Lore for Halloween
Diana Rajchel - 2015
It includes hands-on information for modern celebrations, spells and divination, recipes and crafts, invocations and prayers, and more!Samhain—also known as Halloween—is the final spoke in the wheel of the year. At this time, the harvest has finished and the veil between the worlds is at its thinnest. This guide shows you how to practice the serious work of divination and honoring the dead along with the more light-hearted activities of Halloween.
Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Book of Tarot
Rachel Pollack - 1980
Described by many as ‘the Bible of Tarot readers’, the books brought awareness of myth and modern psychology to the Tarot’s ancient esoteric symbolism. Now, for the first time, the texts for 'The Major Arcana' and 'The Minor Arcana' appear in one volume. To mark this special occasion, Rachel Pollack has revised and updated the book in the light of her thirty years’ teaching, reading, and writing about Tarot cards. She has also written a new preface describing her own journey through the Tarot’s world of symbols.The Tarot is an eternally fascinating set of strange and beautiful pictures. But beyond this lies a world of potent symbols granting access to a path of self knowledge, personal growth and freedom. These symbols connect us to the great stories of world mythology and the eternal truths of the soul. 'Seventy Eight Degrees of Wisdom'shows you how to use Tarot as an effective and accessible means of self-enlightenment. The book includes a complete section on how to give Tarot readings, as well as an analysis of the origins, meaning and psychological aspects of Tarot divination.
Advanced Magick for Beginners
Alan Chapman - 2008
The author assumes no previous knowledge, only a willingness to explore what magick offers, yet its apparent to anyone with a background in the subject that Alan Chapman is drawing on a wide range of experience, from classical Crowleyean Magick, to eastern metaphysics, and back again to Discordianism and Chaos Magick. Chapmans writing-style is humorous, direct, seductively logical, and his enthusiasm for the benefits of magick is both tangible and infectious. The novice magician will indeed find themselves equipped to commence all sorts of magickal operations: trance work, enchantment, divination, and even some of the higher forms of spiritual development. To experienced magicians, Chapman offers a subtler challenge: he revitalises magick by cutting it free from the extreme relativism Chaos Magick bequeathed, provocatively redefining it as: the art, science and culture of experiencing truth.
Ancestral Medicine: Rituals for Personal and Family Healing
Daniel Foor - 2017
Coming into relationship with your ancestors empowers you to transform negative family patterns into blessings and encourages good health, self-esteem, clarity of purpose, and better relationships with your living relatives. Offering a practical guide to understanding and navigating relationships with the spirits of those who have passed, Daniel Foor, Ph.D., details how to relate safely and effectively with your ancestors for personal, family, and cultural healing. He provides exercises and rituals, grounded in ancient wisdom traditions, to help you initiate contact with your ancestors, find supportive ancestral guides, cultivate forgiveness and gratitude, harmonize your bloodlines, and assist the dead who are not yet at peace. He explains how to safely engage in lineage repair work by connecting with your more ancient ancestors before relating with the recently deceased. He shows how, by working with spiritually vibrant ancestors, individuals and families can understand and transform intergenerational patterns of pain and abuse and reclaim the full blessings and gifts of their bloodlines. Ancestral repair work can also catalyze healing breakthroughs among living family members and help children and future generations to live free from ancestral burdens. The author provides detailed instructions for ways to honor the ancestors of a place, address dream visits from the dead, and work with ancestor shrines and altars. The author offers guidance on preparing for death, funeral rites, handling the body after death, and joining the ancestors. He also explains how ancestor work can help us to transform problems such as racism, sexism, homophobia, and religious persecution.By learning the fundamentals of ancestor reverence and ritual, you will discover how to draw on the wisdom of supportive ancestral guides, heal family troubles, maintain connections with beloved family after their death, and better understand the complex and interconnected relationship between the living and the dead.
Modern Tarot: Connecting with Your Higher Self through the Wisdom of the Cards
Michelle Tea - 2017
Infused with beloved iconoclastic author Michelle Tea’s unique insight, inviting pop sensibility, and wicked humor, Modern Tarot is a fascinating journey through the cards that teaches how to use this tradition to connect with our higher selves.Whether you’re a committed seeker or a digital-age skeptic—or perhaps a little of both—Tea’s essential guide opens the power of tarot to you. Modern Tarot doesn’t require you to believe in the supernatural or narrowly focus on the tarot as a divination tool. Tea instead provides incisive descriptions of each of the 78 cards in the tarot system—each illustrated in the charmingly offbeat style of cartoonist Amanda Verwey—and introduces specially designed card-based rituals that can be used with any deck to guide you on a path toward radical growth and self-improvement.Tea reveals how tarot offers moments of deep, transformative connection—an affirming, spiritual experience that is gentle, individual, and aspirational. Grounded in Tea’s twenty-five years of tarot wisdom and her abiding love of the cards, and featuring 78 black and white illustrations throughout, Modern Tarot is the ultimate introduction to the tradition of the tarot for millennial readers.
The Satanic Bible
Anton Szandor LaVey - 1969
It is a collection of essays, observations and rituals, and outlines LaVey's Satanic ideology. It contains the core principles of the Church of Satan and is considered the foundation of the philosophy and dogma that constitute LaVeyan Satanism.