Alchemy and Herbalism Part IV- Illness as Initiation
The Plant Path: Herbalism, Medical Astrology & Spagyric Alchemy
Sajah Popham
4.8 • 570 Ratings
🗓️ 10 May 2023
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Alchemy provides a unique perspective on health and disease that differs from conventional medicine. According to this philosophy, periods of sickness and health are as natural as the changing of the seasons.
Alchemy views illness as an initiation. From this perspective, sickness provides you with the opportunity to heal underlying patterns and undergo transformation. One of the best forms of herbal remedies to help you with this process is spagyrics. Because these medicines work on the chemical, energetic, and spiritual levels, they correct health imbalances at their root and help you emerge more whole than before.
In this week's episode, you'll learn:
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How alchemy's views on illness differ from conventional medicine
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What illness as initiation really means
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Ways that planetary and elemental archetypes influence your health
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The crucial role spagyrics play in healing archetypal imbalances
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How to approach healing for transformational results
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ABOUT THE PLANT PATH
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The Plant Path is a window into the world of herbal medicine. With perspectives gleaned from traditional Western herbalism, Ayurveda, Chinese Medicine, Alchemy, Medical Astrology, and traditional cultures from around the world, The Plant Path provides unique insights, skills and strategies for the practice of true holistic herbalism. From clinical to spiritual perspectives, we don't just focus on what herbs are "good for," but rather who they are as intelligent beings, and how we can work with them to heal us physically and consciously evolve.
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ABOUT SAJAH
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Sajah Popham is the author of Evolutionary Herbalism and the founder of the School of Evolutionary Herbalism, where he trains herbalists in a holistic system of plant medicine that encompasses clinical Western herbalism, medical astrology, Ayurveda, and spagyric alchemy.
His mission is to develop a comprehensive approach that balances the science and spirituality of plant medicine, focusing on using plants to heal and rejuvenate the body, clarify the mind, open the heart, and support the development of the soul. This is only achieved through understanding and working with the chemical, energetic, and spiritual properties of the plants. His teachings embody a heartfelt respect, honor and reverence for the vast intelligence of plants in a way that empowers us to look deeper into the nature of our medicines and ourselves.
He lives on a homestead in the foothills of Mt. Baker Washington with his wife Whitney where he teaches, consults clients, and prepares spagyric herbal medicines.
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the plant path, your window into the world of herbal medicine, with Saja and Whitney Popham, founders of the School of Evolutionary Herbalism. |
| 0:22.6 | Hey there, everybody, Saja here, and welcome to the fourth and final part of our alchemy and herbalism series. |
| 0:30.6 | Hopefully you've been getting inspired and illuminated a little bit on the tradition of alchemy and the profound influence that it can have |
| 0:40.7 | on your work with medicinal plants and as an herbalist. And, you know, this week's discussion is |
| 0:49.7 | kind of taking it to the another step here, another level, and looking at how alchemy really |
| 0:58.0 | sees disease and healing and what exactly alchemically prepared herbal medicines or |
| 1:06.0 | Spajirics are doing. What happens when you start working with Spajirics because as we've found over the years, |
| 1:15.0 | these types of herbal medicines have a pretty different way that they affect us than, you know, |
| 1:21.5 | your standard forms of herbal preparations. So, you know, last week I was kind of introducing a little bit about |
| 1:28.2 | Spajirics and kind of how they're different from standard herbal extracts and the way in |
| 1:35.2 | which Spadjerics are, you know, as this branch of the alchemical tradition that focuses on |
| 1:42.5 | working with plants, how they are really working |
| 1:46.7 | holistically on the whole person because they contain the whole plant in the way that they |
| 1:52.9 | are concentrating the chemical, the energetic, and the spiritual properties of the plants. |
| 1:58.9 | They are then working on the physical, psychological, |
| 2:02.0 | and spiritual levels within a person that takes them. But like how exactly are they healing us? |
| 2:09.2 | What's going on there? And how does alchemy view health and disease? Right. So I like to summarize |
| 2:17.3 | this in a short little statement, which is, you know, |
| 2:21.6 | our illness is our initiation. And what do I mean by that? Well, basically, according to alchemy, |
| 2:29.8 | you know, everything in nature is in a constant state of change and flux and transition or |
| 2:39.3 | transformation. And from looking at nature, we see that, you know, everything is always changing |
| 2:47.4 | and transforming from, you know, the turning of the seasons and the cycles of the |
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