Do You Need to Know Botany to Be a Great Herbalist?

The Plant Path: Herbalism, Medical Astrology & Spagyric Alchemy

Sajah Popham

Alternative Health, Medicine, Health & Fitness

4.8 • 570 Ratings

🗓️ 10 April 2024

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Do you need to know botany to be a great herbalist? Since learning botany is like learning a new language, it's a fair question. After all, if you won't use it, is it worth becoming fluent in it?

Being an herbalist means a lot of things: Working with people, plants, and being the bridge between the two. Although it might seem like studying botany is an important part of this process, the answer to this question might surprise you.

In today's episode, you'll discover:

The three layers of botany and how you can use them in your work with herbs
When learning botany is helpful as an herbalist, and when it's not
The #1 most important piece of botany every herbalist should know
How knowing botany can help you prevent harming people and spot bad herbal products
My top book recommendations that make learning botany easy for anyone

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CONNECT WITH SAJAH AND WHITNEY

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To get free in depth mini-courses and videos, visit our blog at:

http://www.evolutionaryherbalism.com

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Get a free 5-week course when you buy a copy of the book, Evolutionary Herbalism:
https://www.evolutionaryherbalism.com/evolutionary-herbalism-book/

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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.
0:23.6	Hey there, everybody, Saja Popham here, founder of the School of Evolutionary Herbalism.
0:29.6	And, you know, the other day I got asked a pretty interesting question from a student of mind.
0:36.6	And that was, do I really need to know botany to be a good herbalist?
0:43.0	And I thought this was a very curious question. And it's led to other questions of mind where we have
0:48.6	all of these other kind of branches of study associated with plants that may or may not actually contribute to you
0:59.9	being a really good herbalist. So I thought it was an interesting question that I would share
1:03.2	with everybody in the evolutionary herbalism community. So let's talk about this. But for starters,
1:10.6	let's talk about botany. What exactly is
1:13.0	botany? Well, the way I tend to think of botany is that it is essentially a science, it's a branch of
1:20.9	science. And I think of botany as basically a language. It is a scientifically based language used for describing plants in
1:31.9	sometimes painstakingly detail, right? We're looking at their physiology, their anatomical
1:38.9	structures. We're looking at their ecology, their distribution. And in a big way, we're looking at how plants are classified.
1:48.7	We're looking at an organizational structure in which plants are put into specific categories
1:56.6	based on patterns and similarities in typically their anatomical and physiological structures.
2:06.3	So it's a way of, it's a language that we use to describe plants.
2:10.9	And like any language and learning a new language, it can be complicated, right?
2:17.1	It can be, take a lot of focus and a lot of work and a new language, it can be complicated, right? It can be, uh, take a lot of focus and a lot of
2:20.1	work and a lot of, uh, discipline to really learn, uh, the botany language in a lot of detail.
2:28.3	And one of the ways I like to think of botany as it applies to herbalism because, right, botany is a whole branch of
2:36.9	science. It doesn't always all pertain necessarily directly to herbal medicine, but I think there's a
2:42.9	handful of attributes of botany that do and that I think can be really good to know and to
	...

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