There's this major break in our ancestral Stories, the podcast where we are

remembering that story is medicine, magic is real, and healing is open-ended and endless.

I'm Amber Magnolia Hill, and today I'm talking to Catherine Soli all about poisonous plant medicine.

And of course I'm thinking about sown coming up, Halloween, this very pivotal, very sacred time of year that I think no matter how you feel

about either one of those holidays which have come to be conflated into one.

You can feel it. There's just something magical about October and late October and early November and our ancestors felt it too.

And something that I always recall learning about. It was in the book Witchcraft Medicine that I read about 13 years ago when my oldest was a baby and in the show notes for this episode

Catherine and I have shared I think five awesome books about

poisonous plant medicine. So that book is there. It's written by three German

scholars. It's not like a modern, like a pagan book written by some 22 year old. It's really a neat deep dive into European uses of plants and especially in, you know, in the old days and the old ways and in the wise women who were named

witches and sometimes persecuted killed burnt alive for their knowledge of herb lore and healing and control over big things like life and death and one of the things I always remember learning about that book is where

this idea that we have today of Halloween witches flying on their brooms came from and it's really tied into the poisonous plants, many of which

we'll talk about today and how these wise women would use them in ointments, because of course you don't want to take these internally

in any regular dose that you would take for any other herb.

Catherine and I talk about that so please always consider safety first when working with poisonous plants, just essences basically or topical appointments, and that depending on the herbs they worked with they would induce visionary states and that these

visionary states were likened to flying and you know theome Association is being associated with the hearth and the home and just like

taking care of everyday business and everyday life within the family within the village and the community.

And you know, it's really fascinating looking into the history of

of witchcraft in Europe and the witch trials and the burnings and it's just it goes so deep and really there's this huge association.

It wasn't just that these were wise women and healers, although of course there was that too, but with Christianity and patriarchy coming down so hard, it was specifically this

just sounds so absurd and saying to us today,

it just sounds so absurd and insane to us today because it is.

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